


Sparks

by sparrowshellcat



Category: Fast and the Furious Series, Iron Man (Movies), Transformers (Bay Movies)
Genre: F/F, M/M, Multi, decepticons don't approve of threesomes, throwing decepticons at Tony Stark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-08
Updated: 2012-10-08
Packaged: 2017-11-15 22:40:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 58,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/532563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparrowshellcat/pseuds/sparrowshellcat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony Stark went to demonstrate a missile. </p><p>Instead, he found himself in the midst of an intergalactic war between two organic robotic armies, in which humans are merely ants on the battlefield. The other humans, that is. Because he has an Autobot spark in his chest, and wouldn't it have been awfully nice of his father to mention that he hadn't really invented most of the things that Starktech was known for, but actually borrowed them from the Decepticons? So now, Tony is supposed to help save the world, when he'd really rather just crawl into bed with some of the very interesting people he's managed to meet along the way. Well, if he does manage to save the world, maybe he'll finally get laid.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sparks

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Robot Big Bang 2012. I was SO lucky to have an amazing artist named kisforkurama do artwork for this story, if you'd like, you can see it here: [Stunning Art!](http://kisforkurama.livejournal.com/250175.html)
> 
> \---
> 
> For more fic and art, you can follow me on Tumblr! [sparrowshellcat](http://sparrowshellcat.tumblr.com)

As another explosion erupted somewhere to his left and he scrambled behind a rock for cover, Tony caught himself thinking that this was _not_ how he had expected this day to go.

After all, it had seemed like a simple enough thing – hop on a plane, nip over to Afghanistan, demonstrate his newest military marvel to a more-than-receptive audience. He dealt in death, the American military would eat up the Jericho. Hell, really it was a humanitarian thing he was doing, ending the war early and all. Despite Pepper's concerns for security and the safety of a weapons dealer walking into a war zone, it wasn't going to be anything too flashy. No limos painted like the American flag, he was just going in, dealing a little shock and awe, then ducking out.

His godfather had thought it was a great idea.

“It shows you really care about our boys and girls fighting over there, Tony,” Obie had said, clapping his shoulder like a father proud of his son's report card. “Making a personal appearance to show them the newest in tech, the newest weapon in the war against terror.”

Besides, Rhodey was going to be there, and Tony figured that if he wasn't safe with his old friend, he wasn't safe anywhere.

The flight there had been surprisingly pleasant, and Tony had rather enjoyed the hostesses with the stripper pole. But it had been a long flight, and after Rhodey had ended up sleeping over his bottle of sake, he had spent a good chunk of the remaining time scrawling ideas for better military aircraft in his phone, uploading them to Jarvis so they'd be ready for further consideration when he got home. After all, Rhodey complained so very much, maybe he'd be less uptight if being in the airforce wasn't quite so unpleasant.  Not everyone was blessed with their very own private jets. Poor suckers. Tony wasn't even going to be spending the night there, so he stepped off the plane at the Bagram base, tucked on his sunglasses to combat the desert sun, then hopped in the Humvee to get to the demonstration ground.

The Jericho was one of those projects that had started as a joke. “Bet I could take out more targets with a single bomb than anyone ever has before.”

Tony didn't back down from challenges.

And he liked showing off his successes.

Naturally, no matter how Islamic – and therefore dry – a nation was, Tony Stark was never going to be without his alcohol, so he was carrying a glass of whiskey – on the rocks – as he strolled along the edge of the area they'd declared safe, as he waited for the Military Brass to get their shit together enough for his demonstration. It was far too early for a drink here, but it was still the wee hours of the morning back in California, so who cared if he indulged? He was sipping when Rhodey stepped up beside him, hands draped behind his back.

“So,” Rhodey said, lowly. “What do you think?”

Tony mulled over that for a moment, then said, cheekily, “Needs more green. All I see, in every direction, is the world's largest kitty litter box. Well, bar the Sahara.”

His friend sighed, and shook his head. “Tony...”

“I think _you_ need to remember where you packed your sense of humour away.” He smirked, swallowing a mouthful of the amber liquid that burned its way down his throat, and left little tendrils of warmth working their way through his body. “Otherwise, I think we're being watched.”

“...what?” Rhodey frowned, muscles tensing under the lines of his uniform.

Tony motioned to the foothills that stood between them and the mountains that ringed this particular portion of the country. It was those mountains that had actually led to this location being used for the test. It was more secure, the military men Obie had been dealing with to set this all up had said, when they could patrol a controlled area. Tony knew, whether they could protect it or not, that his weapons were better than theirs, anyway. They'd spank any attackers. “There's someone out there with a camera or something. Keep seeing the sun hit the lens.”

“We'll have them taken care of - “ Rhodey started, but Tony caught his arm.

“Let them be, Rhodey. This is the kind of publicity you can't pay for. After all, isn't that what this war is based on?” He grinned. “Shock and awe? Let them take pictures. Soon you'll have the Taliban peeing themselves in their caves.”

“Eloquent as ever,” Rhodey sighed.

“Yeah, I’m pretty good at that,” Tony grinned, then tipped his glass to his friend. “But I think I’m up. Ready for a show?”

“With you, Tony,” his old friend said, “Everything is a show.”

“True.” He pointed at him, then left the whiskey aside as he smoothed his tie, and went out to make his demonstration.

The Jericho was a missile that effectively did the job of a half dozen missiles. He'd figured that it was better, long run, to shoot less missiles and achieve more effect. Sure, that meant the military would potentially buy less _of_ them, but efficiency – and a higher cost per unit – was sort of the goal here. Tony had rather thought his presentation had gone quite well – dramatic, but not overly so, and it really had _impact_. Both literally and figuratively. Tony knew how to put on a show.

A show such as this _was_ bound to draw attention, however, so the plan had been to arrive, show off, then get the hell out of Dodge. Tony had managed to snag another drink before they headed out, though, and he rode back towards the air base with a group of soldiers that made him feel frustratingly old and out of shape.

(Not that Tony would ever admit this, naturally, and he liked to think of himself as in peak condition, but he was pretty sure the arms on the man sitting in the front passenger seat were bigger around than his waist.)

“It's a pleasure to meet you, Mister Stark,” the man beside him said.

“Tony,” he tugged off  his sunglasses, hooking them on his shirt pocket, inside his jacket, before nodding at the soldier. “A pleasure.”

“Captain Lennox.” The man said, with a smirk. “I must say, it's a little odd to see you out here.”

“Yes, well, we all have our own battle grounds,” Tony smirked, sipping at his whiskey. “Mine is just usually in board rooms and senate meetings. Is there supposed to be a helicopter ahead? I didn't think we had air support.”

“We didn't.” Lennox said, smirk long gone as he grabbed his radio. “Convoy leader! Did the manifest change, or - ?”

Lennox never really got a chance to finish that statement, because a missile suddenly launched from the underside of the hovering helicopter, and the vehicle ahead of them in the convoy erupted in a ball of flame, lifting right off the ground.

The shout of shock that left Tony's lips surprised even him, even as the Humvee screeched to a halt.

“Epps!” Lennox was shouting, as he scrambled from the vehicle, already firing.

Muscle-Arms snarled, but nodded.

“What's going on?” Tony shouted, as another explosion from the Humvee rocked theirs, and he grabbed at the back of Epp's seat to steady himself.

“Firefight.” Epps suddenly shoved his door open. “Stay in the vehicle. Sir.”

“Fuck that,” Tony followed him outside, using the side of the vehicle for cover. He couldn't really tell who was fighting who, to be honest. He was in the business of war, but not in the practice of it, and inexperienced with this. Soldiers were firing, the helicopter was churning up dust and smoke from the roaring inferno that had once been a military vehicle, and all Tony could consciously think was “Good god, I hope that wasn't the one Rhodey was in.”

There was another explosion, this one much closer, then the solid thud-thud-thud of bullets hitting metal. The Humvee he was using as a shield rocked with each thud, and figuring that this was probably a prudent time to seek better shelter, he darted off the rough road to duck behind a large rock.

This, naturally, brought him to his moment of introspection in the midst of battle, and the explosion that had him scrambling for better cover was his vehicle exploding.

Tony scrambled for a small cluster of rocks that seemed to be away from the brunt of the fighting, then froze as the helicopter swung over his location, as though it was seeking him out on purpose. He looked up at it warily, not sure if it was safer to stay still, or bolt for the cover.

After all, at any moment, the pilot could fire again.

Only the pilot didn't fire.

Instead, the helicopter abruptly broke in half.

Or, at least, that's what Tony thought was happening, at first. The whole back half of the machine had suddenly snapped down, as though someone had chopped it in half, but then other parts were breaking outwards or inwards or twisting and reforming. Tony scrambled for the rocks, after all, but even as he cowered in their cover, he could not tear his eyes from the machine above him, until it had reshaped itself into something entirely different. Dark and malevolent, a humanoid machine – a _robot_? - stood over him, and it leaned over him, one of those very alarmingly humanoid hands reaching for him. It let out a series of sounds he didn't recognize – but also didn't sound exactly like a machine – as though it was trying to communicate, and Tony dug his heels in the sand, pushing back.

But as the robotic monstrosity's fingers were about to close in on him, there was a metallic tinging sound on the rocks, and Tony just had time to see his own company's logo on the side of the explosive before it blew.

 

\---

 

Tony didn't know what was going on.

He knew that he was in excruciating pain, and that people were talking and moving and shifting and sometimes it was bright but more often it was dark, and for awhile he was forced to sit up, and sometimes he was being held down by someone. He knew that there were sounds and smells he didn't recognize and sometimes there was the smell of scorched, cauterized skin and sometimes the scent of motor oil, and there was the face of a man, in glasses, and a video camera and sometimes he swore he saw that robotic beast of a machine again, though he'd lost track of when he was actually awake and when he was dreaming.

When Tony finally woke enough to process what was going on, he realized that he was laying on a small cot, in a cave, of all places. A fire was flickering somewhere to his left, and Tony groaned softly.

There was a tube in his nose, and with clumsy, fumbling fingers, he reached for it, pulling it free. It seemed to pull out forever, and ever, more and more and more, until it finally found its end and he was able to jerk it free of its place, leaving him gasping for his own air.

Everything hurt. His head was ringing like it had that time he'd gotten a concussion playing football in college. But it was his chest that hurt the worst.

Reaching up, he fumbled with clumsy fingers at his aching chest. The bandages made sense, he could understand bandages.

The wires traveling out from under them to the car battery laying beside him, _that_ made less sense.

It was probably some kind of electrical restraint, he reasoned, or an alarm system to alert someone. Perhaps a monitoring device? A crude heart monitor, perhaps. But there was something _under_ the bandages, as though someone had surgically implanted something in his chest.

As he was fumbling to figure out what it was, a voice interrupted him.

“I wouldn't touch that, if I were you.”

Tony's eyes immediately flicked to the sound of the other man's voice, and forced himself to sit up. Those wires in his chest pulled when he did, and he reached to lift the battery with kitten-weak arms, trying to face his – captor? doctor? rescuer? fellow prisoner? -  properly.

The speaker was a whisp of a man, tall, thin, worn at the edges like a man that had seen too much and understood too little. He wore small, round spectacles, and Tony realized that this was the man he'd seen time and again in his feverish drifting. “After all,” the man was saying, “That battery is the only thing keeping you alive.”

“What do you mean?” Tony rasped, surprised at how rough his voice sounded. Wasn't sure he needed to sound like he was swallowing gravel.

The man stepped closer, stooping to use a metal ladle to scoop water out of a bucket and held it to Tony's lips.

The water was warm, slightly stagnant, and tasted of ash.

It was also the most wonderful thing Tony could ever remember consuming. He reached up with shaking hands to cup the metal ladle, trying to drain it, desperate for hydration. The man helped, tilting the ladle until Tony had drank it all, then dropped it into the bucket again and warned, “Can't drink too much too fast, you'll become ill.”

Tony nodded, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He knew that, though he still didn't like it. “What is this?” He asked again, voice not so rough this time.

“When they told me to save your life, I thought they were mad,” The man said, and settled delicately on the edge of Tony's cot, smiling faintly. “You had been hit by a shrapnel bomb – very effective, those bombs. We call them the Walking Dead, those who have been hit by it. It takes about a week for the barbs to work their way through their bodies, to their vital organs. It is not the explosion that kills you, it is the shrapnel.” He hesitated. “I was able to get most of it, but there was some I dare not touch. Your heart... your heart is full of it.”

He knew what that meant. Hell, he'd designed the bomb that had done it. “I should be dead.”

“So you should,” the other agreed, and tapped Tony's bandages. Something under them made a dull clanging sound. “Save for this. It is an electromagnet. It is keeping the shrapnel from shredding your heart to ribbons. For now. One day, that battery will die. I have not saved you forever.”

His eyes widened, and Tony's bloody fingers – still bloody from his injuries from before, maybe? - struggled to find purchase on the bandages. They were just gauze, and despite his weakness, he was desperate, and Tony tore the bandages finally open, gaping down at his chest in horror. His breathing was speeding up now, hyperventilating, but what else was Tony supposed to do? It was difficult to think rationally when he realized that there was a massive _thing_ sticking out of the centre of his chest, the edges of the wound raw and bloody still, like a metal stopper shoved in an open wound. There was no style to it, just function. Raw, ugly, desperate function.

Tony swallowed, and the water he'd drank churned in his stomach. “How did you know it would work?”

“I did not,” he said, spreading his calloused, worn hands. “But if I had failed, you would have been dead anyway, and it would not have mattered.”

“Cheerful thought,” he muttered, then nodded at the man. “Tony Stark.”

“I know who you are,” the man smirked, faintly. “Your signature is all over this region. I have seen your face before. We have even met before, once, at a technical conference. You were lecturing on Integrated Circuits... and were I as drunk as you, I would not have been able to _stand_. I am called Dr. Yinsen.”

“Yinsen.” Tony nodded, and shifted the bandages, trying to see the electromagnet that Yinsen had apparently built into his chest, frowning slightly. It saved his life, but as the other had said, it was not a permanent solution. Tony would have to find something better, but at least he was alive. “Are we prisoners, then?”

“I would say so.” The other said, letting out a soft, derisive laugh.

“Where are we?” Tony asked, frowning. It was essential to find out where he was, to figure out what was going on. He hated not being in control of the situation, hated not knowing every detail. He just had to find out every variable, and he should be able to find a way out of the situation. He always had managed before. He would manage again.

He had to.

If he accepted defeat now, he was never going to get out.

“We are the captives of the Ten Rings.” Yinsen said, shifting slightly on the cot. He nodded up at the wall, where a camera, the kind he imagined you might see in an office building or a convenience store, cheap, not high quality, but effective. Tony sat up a little straighter at the sight of them, and Yinsen smiled faintly.  “It is a terrorist organization, in these parts. They are ruthless and unnecessarily cruel. They have not told me why they want you, but... _I_ am here to keep _you_ alive.”

“They took you prisoner to keep me alive?” Tony furrowed his brows, looking up at him.

“Well, I was already their prisoner.” He admitted. “Though I am fairly sure that I am merely alive _now_ for this purpose. I was unable to give them the information they initially sought, and so... soon I suppose we shall see why they wanted you alive. Perhaps for ransom – there are many stories told here, about your wealth.”

“If it's for ransom, they'll get it.” Tony muttered.

“I thought as much.” Yinsen agreed.

The doctor's head snapped up, though, at the sound of yelling. Tony didn't understand a word of what was being said, it wasn't one of the several languages he actually knew – a recessed part of Tony's otherwise distracted mind made a mental note that perhaps he should be looking into learning some of the Middle Eastern languages, especially in light of the war and all, but that was something he'd have to think about later, when he was free – and Yinsen bolted up to his feet, motioning for Tony to follow him. “Stand up. _Stand up_. Do as I do, just _do as I do_ ,”

Tony shifted, trying not to get too far away from the battery, not wanting the wires to catch. He did as the doctor ordered, though, following his example as he put his arms up, lacing his fingers behind his head.

They really _were_ prisoners. It was a terrible thing to really realize, a sickening sinking feeling.

The men that walked into the room were dressed in scruffy fatigues, castoffs from previous wars and perhaps even this one, dirty and rough. It was their weapons that Tony noticed, though – distinctively Stark-Tech guns in their hands. Stark Industries didn't sell to the enemy, they had a proprietary contact with the American military, where had these men gotten his weapons from? Stolen them from the American soldiers? Black market, maybe, but he hadn't heard anything about any shipments being stolen, any stock missing...

Tony took a half step forward, trying to see all the men, trying to catalogue in his mind what exactly these terrorists had. There would be hell to pay for this.

“ _No_ ,” Yinsen hissed. “Do _just_ as I do.”

Reluctantly, he stopped, staying still beside his companion as a man he had to assume was the leader stepped into the cave, holding out his arms, expansively, as he spoke almost jovially in that language Tony didn't know. What he wouldn't give for his phone running Babelfish right now. But in the midst of that speech, what he _did_ hear, was his own name.

 _Stark_.

His companion translated for him, quietly. “He says, 'Welcome, Tony Stark, the most famous mass-murderer in all of American history. He is honoured to meet you. He says he wants you to – he wants you to build the missile for him. The _Jericho_ missile.” Yinsen reached out to take the photo that the leader handed to him, holding it out for Tony. “This one. He – he wants you to build the missile you showed the Americans.”

Tony glanced at the photo, remembered the man with the camera that he'd spotted in the foothills, the one that Rhodey had offered to deal with – and Tony had said to leave. _This is the kind of publicity you can't pay for,_ Tony had said.

But he _was_ paying for it now, he was staring at a grainy photo of his own missile, with an electromagnet humming in his chest.

_America doesn't negotiate with terrorists._

Tony lifted his jaw, meeting this man's eyes. Their leader was waiting for an answer. Tony had one for him.

“I refuse.”

 

\---

 

Tony's hair was still dripping in his eyes when one of the terrorists tugged the burlap sack off of his head. Hadn't he had a burlap sack on his head, earlier? His recollection of the past few days was fuzzy, so he wasn't entirely sure, but he remembered the camera, remembered the strange scent of old grain dust trapped inside burlap around his head, trapping him and the heat of his breathing inside.

It was too bright, when he blinked at the sky, confused. Was this another new form of torture? They'd nearly drowned him, were they planning on exposing him, now? Letting him die in the desert?

Tony wanted to reach up to shield his eyes, but he had to hold up the heavy battery that was keeping him alive.

But it wasn't exposure.

It was a stockpile. Rows upon rows of tents made of ghillie netting, shielding them from prying eyes, hiding them within the little valley in which they stood, which was like wound that someone had split through the stone. It felt like the wound in his chest – open and raw. This little space was filled with men and weapons – and everywhere, there was that familiar logo, _Stark Industries_ , emblazoned on everything. Weapons carrying cases, missiles, guns, boxes of grenades... all his company's design. All his creation.

What had that Vanity Fair reporter called him? Merchant of Death?

Maybe she was right.

The leader was saying something again, and Tony reluctantly tore his eyes away from one of his missiles, a prototype that had only been available to even his own military for maybe a couple of weeks, now.

Yinsen translated for him, again, saying, “He wants to know what you think.”

“I think you have a lot of my weapons.”

His companion didn't translate what he had said, to the leader. He doubted the leader cared – he was already talking, anyway, and Yinsen was translating for Tony, again. “He says that he has everything you need to build the Jericho. Make the list of materials you need, he says, begin work immediately. When you are done, he will set you free.”

The leader smiled at Tony, broad and confident, like a man that had just offered the most wonderful offer in the world – and held out his hand, for Tony to shake.

Tony's eyes flickered back over the weapons gathered there again, looking for anything out of place. Despite his confusion, he could still clearly remember the massive military helicopter that had become _not_ a helicopter. It had attacked the American convoy, maybe it had been sent by them. Tony hadn't heard anything about any robotics weapons being developed in the Middle East, but it was possible. Not likely, he didn't think, since it seemed like all they had done to amass their arsenal was somehow steal _his_ weapons, but that didn't mean it wasn't possible. There could be robots here, but... if the helicopter had been any indication, they could look like anything.

He flicked his eyes back to the leader, and shifted the car battery to one arm so that he could shake his hand.

“No, he won't.” Tony said, in English.

Smiling slightly, trying to be disarming, Yinsen nodded, and agreed with him, quietly. “No. He won't.”

 

\---

 

Yinsen stepped up to the cot, where Tony was sitting, and offered him a small metal bowl full of a red stew that didn't look all that attractive. Still, Tony took it, almost automatically, and just stared out across the cave, at the fire that was burning in a little barrel.

“You should eat,” Yinsen said, gently, sitting on a wooden box across from Tony, brows furrowed in worry over his glasses. “You need to regain your strength.”

“What's the point?” Tony muttered.

The doctor sighed, and adjusted his hat as he considered the other man. “You want to live, Tony. Accepting defeat, now... that would not be the man that I have been lead to believe you to be. The kind of man that would refuse to make a missile for terrorists... that is not the kind of man that simply gives up. Come, Tony... you must not give up.”

He reluctantly lifted his head, considering the other man. “They won't find me, will they?”

Yinsen hesitated, then shook his head. “No. Your men are sure to be looking for you, but they will never find you in these mountains. Many men have disappeared here.”

Tony frowned, watching Yinsen for a long few moments.

His companion was obviously educated, well-versed, clearly intelligent. This man understood things that most men would be terrified of – and wasn't afraid to take risks, for the sake of science. Well, perhaps it could be said 'for the sake of saving a life', but Tony didn't really think that way. As far as he was concerned, Yinsen's haphazardly lucky experiment with the electro magnet was for the sake of science – to see if it worked.

But maybe Yinsen knew something.

“Have you ever seen a weapon... I think you'd call it a weapon... shape shifting.” Tony hesitated, and held up his hands. “Changes shape. Like a helicopter that... turns into a giant robot.”

The other man hesitated.

That was really answer enough, as far as Tony was concerned. If Yinsen had scoffed, or shaken his head, or in some way suggested it was probably the most ridiculous thing he'd ever heard, he would have known how to read that. But Yinsen wasn't doing that – he was hesitating, as though not sure what exactly to say, in answer.

“Doesn't have to be a helicopter,” Tony said, quietly, considering him. “Could be a car, maybe, or a box... could be anything. Anything that they can make turn into a robot.”

The other man let out a long breath, then said, “You have seen such a thing?”

“Yeah.” Tony answered. “Almost got grabbed by one.”

Yinsen hesitated, then stood suddenly, holding a hand out to Tony. “Just... sit, for a moment... for a moment...”

He watched the scarecrow of a man head across the room, sorting through some of his things, finally returning towards him with a small, battered bag. Smiling faintly at him, Yinsen unzipped the little bag before he pulled out a small metal shape. Tony's eyes narrowed as he considered it, but when the other offered it, he took the little piece, quietly. It was broken, whatever it was, sheered off of something larger. Tony frowned as he turned the piece – maybe five inches long by about three inches round – over and over in his fingers. “What is this?”

“This is a piece of one of those... robots.” Yinsen frowned slightly, nodding towards it. He did note, though, that the doctor's eyes kept flickering to the camera, as though concerned that someone might see him with this.

“You've seen them, then.” Tony looked up. “Who's making them?”

“I don't know,” he admitted, watching Tony turn the piece over in his fingers. “They are like nothing I have ever seen before. They do not seem to care about us and our quarrels, however. I got this piece in my village. One of these... robots, or whatever they are, it attacked, shortly after the Ten Rings had arrived. I believe it was the one that you described, the one that appeared to be a helicopter. They fought it off, part of its arm was severed, that's what this is from. I do not know what it wanted, but whatever it was, it did not get it. Perhaps... no, I do not know, I could not even speculate.”

He nodded, considering all of the little pieces. It was broken, but even with that, he could tell that it was unlike anything he'd ever seen before. And considering the fact that Tony considered it a point of pride to learn everything new he could about tech... that was actually pretty impressive.

“Hn.” Tony frowned. “...this is new.”

“Broken,” Yinsen corrected, with a faint smile, and held his hand out for the piece of metal. Tony handed it back, and the man tucked it into his bag, again.

“So where did it come from, if it was attacking them?” He asked, finally, shifting back a little on the bed, and picked up the plate of stew, scooping up a spoonful of the concoction at last, eating it. Turned out the stew was better than Tony had expected, and he let out a slight sound of pleasure before actually starting to eat, properly. He watched Yinsen, who looked slightly concerned by the question, actually, frowning as he mulled it over. Tony continued to eat the stew, then pointed at the other with his spoon, and said, “Because it attacked Ten Rings, it attacked us in our convoy... I thought it was a weapon they'd developed... but if it's attacking _both_ sides...”

“Could be a third party,” Yinsen agreed, frowning slightly.

“Are there third parties?” Tony considered that for a  moment, then scoffed, and returned to eating. “Of course there are third parties, there are always third parties. And fourth parties, and fifth, and... yeah, of course, there's always someone else getting involved.”

“Why do you ask?” he asked, quietly.

“Because I’ve never seen anything like that, before,” Tony finished his plate, and licked the last of the stew off of his spoon before setting the metal plate on top of his car battery. It was a handy little table. Sort of. “And I like to figure out everything about things I don't know.”

“Curiosity?” Yinsen laughed, shaking his head.

“It's a lot more than curiosity,” Tony smirked, and reached up to touch the electromagnet, frowning slightly. It ached, even just sitting here, not moving.

“Then what are you hoping to achieve?”

“I'm not sure,” Tony admitted, fingers brushing over the bumps of the ridges that made up his life saving electromagnet, and shifted to finally sit up. “But I have an idea.”

 

\---

 

The terrorists were surprisingly complaint.

Tony asked for a welder, he got a welder. He asked for a work station, he got one of those, too. He had them procure him smelting equipment, far more missiles and materials than he would have needed even if he _was_ going to make the bastards their Jericho missile, claiming that he needed them to ensure no mistakes. Paper and pencils came next, then he demanded a computer, citing the need to program the missile. Of course, the computer they managed to drag out of the nineties for him was hardly going to be the best thing in the world, but at least it was _working_ , so that would be a start.

He had work to do, after all – work for them, technically, and a lot of work that Tony was more determined to do for himself.

He hadn't slept in three days.

When Yinsen expressed concern over this, Tony brushed the worries off by pointing out that he'd slept for days while Yinsen had been trying to save his life, so he was trying to make up for it. Besides, as Pepper Potts could have told the bespeckled doctor, once Tony got obsessed with a topic, he tended not to sleep until either his body betrayed him, or someone – usually herself, Rhodey, or his robot Dummy – forced him into bed. So Tony spending hours scribbling on pieces of paper as he squinted in the too dim lamp light was really nothing too unusual. The terrorists that held them didn't interrupt their work – after all, Yinsen was still working diligently to organize and somewhat deconstruct the provided materials, setting them into neat piles, and Tony seemed to be making blueprints. They weren't in much of a rush, really – though they'd prefer to have their new weapon sooner rather than later, they knew that the conditions were not lab worthy, and that usually there were machines and scientists there to assist. After all, with such a weapon, victory would be assured, and they would rather Tony Stark would take a little bit longer to get it _right_.

The problem was, Tony was at an impasse.

They didn't happen often, and when it did, he usually would go out, get himself blindingly, black out drunk, then usually find the solution scrawled on a napkin tucked inside his suit jacket the next morning. Some of Tony's finest work was what he called “Blackout Engineering”.

Only there was no alcohol to be had in that cave, and Tony was weak from malnutrition and vitamin deficiencies. His wound in his chest was healing well, though slowly. He was weak.

On the evening – he assumed evening, as there was no light down there to determine the days by, but Yinsen seemed to stick to a fairly regular schedule that certainly felt like days – of the third day awake, Tony shifted to look thoughtfully at Yinsen, who was cooking up one of his meager stews on their little fire. They had to keep that fire going, Tony wasn't sure their captors would light it again for them if it went out. The other didn't look up at his scrutiny, but did finally say, “Yes, Mr. Stark?”

“What gave you the idea to shove an electromagnet in my chest?”

Yinsen halted, ceasing all movement for a long moment, then said, finally, “It was the only solution I could think of. There were metal shards that were trying to work their way into your heart, all I could think was that I should halt the metal from going inside.”

“So a magnet was your solution?”

“Yes,” he said, though he did not meet Tony's eyes.

“You ever shoved an electromagnet in anyone else's chest?” Tony tapped his pencil on the edge of the metal barrel he was using as a desk, a staccato syncopated rhythm.

“...no.” Yinsen said, slowly.

“Figured I was a good guinea pig for the cockamamie theory of yours then, did you?” Tony arched a brow, still tapping with his pencil. “Just shove something in his chest, no one will cry if it doesn't work?”

“The Ten Rings ordered me to keep you _alive_ ,” Yinsen said, sharply. “You were rapidly dying, Tony Stark. If I had done nothing, you surely would have died. I thought it better to attempt to use an unknown technology than it was to let you die!”

He ceased the drumming. “Unknown technology.”

The other stared back at him for a few long moments, then abruptly turned back to his stew, looking flustered. “Yes. Unknown, as no one knew if it would work.”

“Doctor Yinsen...” Tony stood. “I think you're lying to me.”

“There are certain things, Mr. Stark, that you do not want to press too deeply into...”

“And I say bullshit.” He set down his pencil and his design, and stepped closer to Yinsen. Tapping the metal in his chest, Tony said, “I have an electromagnet in my _chest_ , doctor, there are parts of my sternum and ribs _gone_ , and I now will depend on this... this _thing_ to survive as a result. I think, under the circumstances, that you _owe_ me some answers.”

Yinsen's mouth was working, as though behind those tightly pressed lips, he was running his tongue anxiously over his teeth.

“Yinsen.” Tony said, seriously.

“That piece of wreckage was not all I took away from that attack,” he said, at last.

A few minutes later, Tony and Yinsen sat side by side on the edge of the cot, in one of the darker, smokier corners of their cell. The guards would be able to see them in the security feed, but not what they were doing. What they _were_ doing, in fact, was sorting through a series of photos that Yinsen had kept quiet about.

The photos weren't high quality or all that well-developed – about the same quality as the stolen shot of the Jericho.

But what they _showed_ was sensational.

“There were two.” Yinsen was explaining, quietly. “The larger one, the helicopter that you saw, and a smaller one. They captured it, I imagine expecting to interrogate a pilot. Only there _was_ no pilot.”

“Remote controlled?” Tony guessed, examining a shot of the machine spread out on the ground, its humanoid arms tied to stakes.

Yinsen hesitated again.

Tony was starting to get really good at knowing when this man was lying. “Yinsen?”

“Not remote.” He said, at last. “It... escaped, before they were able to get much more than these photos, but in the brief time that the men were able to examine it, no, I do not think it was remote controlled.”

“Escaped is an odd choice of word, doctor.” Tony said, delicately.

“Yet, I feel it is the right one.” Yinsen said, and tapped another of the photos. It was focused on the “head” of the robot, and there was no mistaking that it definitely had a face, with “eyes” turned directly towards the photographer, as though watching back. “In all my life, I have never seen anything such as this. Had I not seen it with my own eyes, I never would have believed it. But Mr. Stark, I do not believe that these were _built_ , not in the sense that we know it. I believe... call me foolish, but I believe that this robot, or whatever you wish to call it, it was _alive_.”

“Well, that's impossible. It's a machine.” Tony waved that off, dismissively. “A very cleverly designed machine, perhaps, but just a machine.”

“You do not believe that Artificial Intelligence is possible?”

“Of course I do,” Tony flipped to another photo. “I've built it before. I just don't think that anyone _else_ has. What is this?”

The other's thin finger traced the dull blue glow in the “chest” of the robot of the photo. “We're not certain what function it actually served, but when they attempted to touch it, that is when the machine reacted so strongly and escaped. We thought perhaps it was a processor, or hard drive. Something essential to keep it running.”

“Or a power source,” Tony murmured.

“Yes, perhaps. It was actually this that inspired me to treat your wounds as I did. I am certain that the form of the magnet could have been different, on your back, perhaps, or if I’d had more time, implanted under your skin, or something, but this crude design, you could say it was an homage to this.”

“It's brilliant.” Tony said, eyes bright for the first time in three days. “It's exactly what I needed. I need paper.”

 

\---

 

“I'm not sure I understand,” Yinsen admitted, frowning slightly.

Tony glanced up from his drawings. There were a lot of them – he hadn't really managed to get must sleep in the last three or four days, but that was sort of par for the course for him, anyhow – and their subjects were varied. Ironically, there actually _were_ a few sketches of the Jericho – but there were also a series of the transforming robot-helicopter that he was absolutely convinced had to have been built by a rival tech company, and a few roughly done technical drawings. It was these technical drawings that Yinsen claimed not to be understanding, which made sense to Tony, actually. As smart as this man was, he wasn't an electrical engineer. Hell, even his own people hadn't actually been able to get this particular set of drawings to become anymore than just some drawings.

“It's experimental tech,” Tony answered. “It's all experimental tech. Well, the robot things may be less experimental, because we've actually _seen_ some of those, but this... this.” He tapped the sketches of the twisting circles. “This is something my dad came up with, years ago. He figured he could use it for clean energy, but you know how things are, in this world, it's the crush for oil, oil, oil. Dad could never get it to work.”

“And you think that a prisoner, in a cave in the wastelands, that you can make it work?” Yinsen asked, skeptically.

He hesitated. “You've got a good point. But I’m not my father.”

“And this is a good thing?”

Tony grinned, baring  his teeth at the doctor. “That is a _very_ good thing. Now we need to start taking these missiles apart.” He held up a small, almost gold leaf fragile piece of metal, carefully. “I need as many of these as you can find.”

“What is it?” Yinsen frowned.

“Vibranium. There's not much of it in these things, but I’m gonna need at least an ounce. Otherwise this might be not be possible.”

He nodded, grimly, and said, “Show me how to take them apart.”

 

\---

 

“I'm going to need a new casing,” Tony frowned, trying to measure the electromagnet in his chest. “To hold the device, when I’m done. How did you forge the casing for the magnet?”

“I didn't.” Yinsen smiled at him, grimly. “It's a shell casing.”

Tony blinked at him, then down at himself. “I'm becoming a human weapon. I suppose it's one of my own designs, too?”

“It is,” the doctor agreed.

“That may be one of the most ironic things in this whole deal,” he muttered. “We have any in this heap the same size, or...?”

“Of course,” Yinsen headed over to delicately pick up one of the shells, which until this point, had been mostly ignored. “It is a standard size, is it not?”

“It is,” Tony agreed, frowning slightly as he turned it over in his hands, then tested the measurements on the construction style tape measure he'd been reduced to using. “We'll need to grind it down... did they get us an angle grinder...? No, of course  not. Hn. Well, time to make do, I suppose.”

 

\---

 

It wasn't until they were finished that Doctor Yinsen finally realized the totality of what Tony had been doing.

There was a very carefully cast ring of Vibranium that was delicate breakable thin at the centre of the design, a delicately wrought thing that Tony had handled as though it was made of spun sugar, dropping it with held breath into the device that he had constructed. Yinsen was the one who had to implant the new micro electromagnet in the base of the new casing they'd carefully installed in Tony's chest, but it was Tony himself that cut the wires going to the car battery, and dropped the miniaturized arc reactor into place.

It began to glow blue, dull at first, then brighter and brighter, until both of their grinning faces were lit up in the night light blue glow.

After that moment, Tony worked like a man possessed.

He built something that looked very much like the base of one of the missiles the Jericho employed, and there were chunks of electronics and wires inside, but they were useless. For show. A smokescreen, in case an angry someone with an itchy trigger finger started to question why Tony had no missiles to show them.

The real project had been drawn on onion skin paper, so that Tony could layer the schematics like he would using holograms, at home.

“Old school engineering,” he had laughed, one evening, as they worked.

The design was unmistakably based on those of the robot he'd seen and the one Yinsen had photographed. And, just as that one photo had shown, the power source would be the blue light in Tony's chest.

“Where will you go, when you get out of here?” Tony asked, one night, as they tested the servos that would work as super powered joints.

“I hope to see my family again,” Yinsen smiled at him. “You? Will you see yours?”

He mulled that over, thinking of Pepper, and Rhodey, and Obie. Closest thing he _had_ to a family, really. “Yeah, I guess so. If they don't kill me first, for being stupid enough to get caught in the first place. Yeah, I guess I will.”

“You sound like a lonely man, Tony Stark,” the other needled, gently.

“Nothing wrong with that, keeps you focused.” He smirked. “Besides, there _is_ a difference between loneliness and being alone, and if I get too lonely, well. I’m Tony Stark. Finding someone to make me less lonely isn't hard to do.”

Yinsen shook his head, smiling faintly.

Time passed quickly, as they absorbed themselves in their work. Days slipped into weeks, and as weeks began to slip into months, Tony finally declared the work done.

They had a plan.

It wasn't a terribly sophisticated plan, it was 'disappear off the cameras long enough to get the guards coming to investigate, then blast our way out'. Tony would go first, in the massive suit of mechanized armour that they had built, then Yinsen, not likewise girded for speed and agility, would follow.

The plan did not involve Tony getting trapped and Yinsen running ahead with only one of the guard's guns to clear the way for Tony.

The metal monstrosity around Tony was difficult to move in. The motors he'd taken from the flight control mechanisms of his own missiles made it possible for him to walk despite the enormous weight of the armour, but they didn't make it easy. It was like being encased inside an oven, the motors hot against his skin as he stumbled with methodical, plodding steps, towards the light. They were drawing power from the arc reactor in his chest, and he could _feel_ their pull, making it thrum in his chest, like an angry cat purring too loud under his skin.

He wasn't sure what he expected to see when he crashed through the next barrier, the light tantilizingly close.

Yinsen dead, perhaps. Vulnerable Yinsen, barreling on ahead to help Tony.

The doctor laying on the ground, with his head trapped under the foot of a massive, black, humanoid robot, however – Tony could never have expected that.

It was the same one he'd seen in the desert, before, helicopter blades hanging from its shoulders like dragonfly wings. He wasn't sure if he should be relieved or terrified that it was the same one.

“Tony!” Yinsen called, voice muffled by the sand. “ _Go_!”

“I won't leave you here!” Tony snarled, and readied the guns set on his shoulders again. Even if that thing was as heavily armoured as he was, there still had to be a soft spot. “You're going to see your family again - “

“My family is dead.”

Tony hesitated.

It was just for a moment, just a brief second where he didn't move immediately, caught off guard by the horrifying realization of what Yinsen meant. The beautiful wife that he'd described to him, late at night while they worked on programming the computer to obey Tony's commands. The smart little ones that Tony knew by name, even though he'd never met them – Rasheedah, Aisha, and the apple of his father's eye, little Sami. Yinsen had told his stories with them alive, with his dreams of seeing their smiles again, when the day came that he was reunited with them. He'd never once let on that they were already dead. That in order to see them, Yinsen, too, would have to die.

So Tony hesitated.

And that was all the machine needed, apparently.

That massive metal foot came down hard, crushing the doctor's head like a ripe watermelon. The sound struck Tony to his core, and he howled, furiously.

The robot laughed.

He had said that it was just a machine, of course it wasn't “alive”, but the sound that this machine was uttering was absolutely, without a doubt, a mechanized, electronic laughter. It was a vicious, almost delighted sound – the laughter of a twisted mind.

Tony started firing.

The guns that Tony was using were more powerful than Yinsen's stolen gun had been – this was, after all, his own design – and he was fairly certain that his mechanized opponent hadn't actually been expecting this kind of resistance. The massive robot took a step back, as though stunned by the force with which Tony's bullets hit, and Tony grinned with no pleasure as he continued firing.

Of course, what Tony had going for him was the element of surprise, and once that element was gone, the machine struck back.

It hit _hard_.

Tony was thrown back against the cave wall, hard enough to crumple parts of his armour, and the rudimentary computer system he'd built in to control fluid levels and the functions of the motors was beeping at him in panic.

“Son of a bitch,” he breathed, shaking his head as he tried to clear it of the fog from the impact. “All right, buddy, let's see what you're really made of, huh?”

After all, whoever controlled this thing was a sadistic bastard.

But it was _just_ a robot.

Tony began firing again, launching himself forward, faster than he could ever move on his own to drive one of his metal gloved fists into the behemoth's chest. He'd sprayed bullets through its armour shell, here, and if Yinsen's photos were correct, that power source – he assumed power source – should be about here.

Tony's armour wasn't perfect. Shards of the robot chest plate slashed at the exposed parts of his hands, making his controls slick with blood. But the armour Tony had built had enough power to punch through the black plated metal, and blue light poured over Tony's hand as his fingertips just touched the glass that covered the light.

It was just glass, after all.

And then electricity surged back through the armour, and Tony was thrown back with a violent blast. He slammed into the wall again, absolutely breathless.

Electricity crackled in the arc reactor in his chest, too powerful, almost too much. The light was almost blinding, now, and it _burned_.

Tony's heart was screaming fast now, no discernible beats, just the rapid buzz that pounded in his ribs so hard he actually thought, for a moment, that the electromagnet itself wasn't going to be necessary – he was just going to die of an exploded heart. All he could hear was the roar of blood in his ears, the crackle of electricity on his skin, the screaming of his veins. But over that panicked frenzy, over the feverish pitch of his own body trying to figure out if it was dying or having the most incredible adrenaline high of his life, he heard the machine speak. Funny, he would have thought that it would be distorted by the panic, but no, Tony could hear the thing's voice clearer than crystal.

He didn't know _what_ it said.

But he _did_ understand the word “Stark” in the midst of the strange electronic mixture of sounds.

Tony lifted his head, breathing hard through his teeth as he struggled to see what was happening. The machine was looking directly at him, and it stepped closer, hands reaching for him. He wasn't sure his suit had enough capacity to fight it off, this time...

An explosion erupted behind the robot, knocking it forward.

It was just a machine, Tony knew that, but it reacted very much like a human might, twisting to look over its shoulder at the outside, at whoever had created that explosion, and it let out a burst of electronic noise that sounded like swearing. It ducked back out of the cave entrance, and he could hear the shouting of men – then another explosion – then it just seemed to be gone.

Men in American uniforms suddenly burst through the entrance of the cave, and Tony was sure he had never seen anything more beautiful.

Actually, that was a complete lie, he'd seen many things more beautiful, including the December cover model twins.

And he certainly planned to see many more such things.

“Mister Stark!”

The soldier that had dropped to his knees beside him, lifting the remains of the mask – which had been half destroyed by the mechanized brute's strike anyways – off of his face, looked oddly familiar. His brows were furrowed in concern, and Tony finally connected the dots as he pointed at him. “Captain Lennox.”

“Yeah. Are you injured? Can you stand?”

“Sure,” Tony lied, grinning at him. “If I weren't such a mess right now, Captain, I’d kiss you. Aw, hell, I don't even care, c'mere.”

Lennox laughed. “Well, your sense of humour's in one piece.”

“Yeah.” Tony's smile faded as he slumped back against the metal “collar” of the suit, drained and exhausted now that the escape itself was over and the adrenaline was starting to wear off. “...any chance we can go back to America, now?”

The other snorted. “I think that can be arranged.”

 

\---

 

“I gotta say... it's an impressive suit of armour.”

Tony nodded, almost idly, sipping at a tin cup of half-decent whiskey that someone had procured for him from he wasn't sure he wanted to know where. The plan thrummed under their feet as his rescue team headed for the airfield they told him he'd go home from, and across the narrow aisle, his rough armour was strapped to the wall. Reminded Tony of some movie he'd seen years ago, an emotionless face staring at him, without really seeing. “Yeah, it did its job. Mostly. Course, if I’d just waited a few more hours, you'd have found me anyway...”

The man on his left scoffed. “No, we wouldn'ta?”

He glanced at Epps, frowning. “What are you talking about? You found me.”

“We were patrolling that area because a civilian reported seeing activity in those hills,” Lennox said, from where he sat on Tony's right. “We were about to leave, when...”

“When?” Tony prompted.

“There was some kind of explosion.” Lennox said, frowning. “All blue light, it was massive. We went running, of course, and that's when the actual explosions started. Figured out there was a man with a rocket launcher shooting at someone in metal armour, and headed right for the cave.”

Tony's brow furrowed. Hadn't they seen the transforming robot? “Was there any air support?”

“No, had to call that in.”

Mulling that over, he said, “There were no helicopters?”

“There _was_ ,” Epps said, frowning. “We figured it was escaping forces... tried to knock the bird out of the sky, but the pilot was good. Evaded. We called in its numbers, though, if anyone sees it, they'll knock it down.”

“Good.” He said, frowning as he considered the problem. There was apparently an advanced form of robotic warfare going on in the middle of what previously had been a war dominated by his own tech. Tony had thought he was on top of all of the developments that rival weapon manufacturers had created, but maybe he wasn't. He had made a fortune by finding a better way to kill, and look where that had gotten him. Held prisoner, tortured, forced to build weapons for the enemy. Nearly a victim of his own design with an arc reactor thrumming away in his chest. A man he respected killed because he was stupid enough to try and help Tony. His weapons had created this in the first place – and whoever was building those robots had just escalated this war to a personal level.

But he'd touched one of those power sources. Had nearly been killed by it, too, but he'd _touched_ it, and the arc reactor in his chest was shining all the brighter for it. Were they arc reactors like his? Maybe someone had finally managed to get his father's tech working. Someone other than him, that was. Corporate thievery had happened before.

But how had they kept it _hidden_?

Stark Industries had the best corporate espionage team out there. Sure, morality and legality would ever lead them to deny this, of course, but it was true. In the worlds of tech and weapons development, a company would be dead in the water if it didn't keep tabs on their competitors. Before the capture, he probably could have rhymed off a list of the rival company's most promising tech – and a Stark Industries option that compared and was in every way superior. Now... now he had no idea how they'd missed it, and how he was going to respond.

But if this was the war his company had created...

 _Diplomacy is the art of saying nice doggie until you can find a rock_.

“Mister Stark?”

Tony started, and glanced at Lennox, who was frowning at him. “Sorry, mind is a million places at once.”

“Your mind is suffering a concussion is what it is,” Lennox shook his head, but he was smirking faintly as he leaned back in his seat. “We'll be at the base soon, they'll be able to get you medical attention... still shouldn't be drinking, though.”

“I have drank through far worse situations than this.” Tony said, confidently.

“Think you're gonna start making things like these for our boys over here?” Epps asked suddenly, motioning at Tony's armour.

He considered that for a moment, then shook his head. “Too hot.”

“Install an air conditioner,” Epps shot back, smirking at him.

“Install a keg!” One of the other soldiers offered.

“Now _that_ is a design improvement I could go for,” Tony pointed at the young, slightly goofy, be-speckled solider. “What are you doing in the army, you should be working in marketing somewhere.”

There was laughter at that, then Epps said, more soberly, “I'm serious, sir. Way I see it, things like that might save a lot of lives.”

“Might end a lot of them, too,” Tony said, his own smile distant, now.

“No offense, sir, but you've made war have a lot less casualties.” Epps said. “Ain't this thing just another weapon?”

“No, see... that's the whole point.” Tony shifted, chafing against the straps that were crossed over his chest, buckling him in place. Normally, he'd be talking with his hands, but the arm he'd severely burned touching the robot's power source was tied with bandages to his chest, and he was holding his tin cup in a death grip with the other. As it was, the cup still got waved about quite a bit. “This isn't a weapon. It's armour.”

“How does that make it stop being a weapon?” Lennox frowned.

“Think of it as a high tech knight's armour.” Tony waved at the strapped in suit. “He rides into battle with a spear and a sword and a bow, maybe. You'd never call his _armour_ a weapon.”

“Yeah,” Lennox agreed. “But if you slap a man while wearing chainmail, it's going to hurt like it was a weapon.”

Tony pursed his lips, seriously considering that. “Good point.”

“What it comes down to,” the other explained, hooking his thumbs in his seat belt straps and looking entirely comfortable about being strapped in and all. “Is that just because something was made for defense doesn't mean it can't also be used for offense.”

“It's multi functional.” Epps said. “Like a Swiss Army Knife.”

“Fairly sure the Swiss Army Knife wasn't built out of scrap metal in a cave in Afghanistan.” Tony smirked.

“Pretty sure that makes this thing even more badass.” Epps shrugged.

Lennox snorted, and just shook his head. “They're going to need to debrief you, when we get back to camp. Everything you know about who captured you, all that.”

“God. Sounds boringly official. That all can't wait til I’m in America?”

“ _Might_ be able to make it wait til tomorrow.” Lennox smirked.

“We are too damn efficient a nation,” Tony said, shaking his head.

They laughed.

“No, really.” He drained his tin cup. “It's terrifying. Can I get another of these? Thanks.”

\---

The brass had decided that yes, in fact, Tony would be debriefed tomorrow. Considering his pounding headache and the fact that he'd been held captive in a cave for almost two months, he thought that downright charitable of them.

The medical personnel here seemed more than qualified to take care of his burn and his mild concussion, but they'd been utterly flummoxed by the arc reactor. Finally, having been tired of their hurried whispers and sideways looks since they'd started, Tony had just told them to make sure the skin _around_ the reactor was healing fine, and otherwise leave it.

One of his planes was supposed to arrive, day after tomorrow, and he'd requested a set of clean clothes. It'd be nice to feel like himself, again.

Until then, he was wearing a set of pale green hospital scrubs that someone had found for him, with a heavy uniform jacket on top. He didn't know if it was anyone's, specifically, but it was draped around his shoulders like a cape, and Tony was infinitely grateful for it. Who knew that deserts got so incredibly cold when the sun went down.

His borrowed boots scraped when he stepped, the drifting sand between his soles and the hard packed paths like sand paper.

“Feels like on Tatooine,” he muttered, as he crested a hill that overlooked the rest of the camp. The tent collective looked like a small city, lit up by massive overhead lights and the last fading vestiges of t he sun, men and women moving about between the tents, some with precision timing and some with the casual gait that spoke of people grateful for a few minutes off. There was a small gathering of soldiers playing basketball on a sandy court, and beyond the tent city a massive airfield spread out, planes and helicopters waiting for launch.

A jeep trundled along one of the little dirt tracks below, and Tony snorted at the sight of several soldiers sitting in the back, holding  his armour still.

“Jawas,” he muttered, and started walking down the hill towards the tents. “How fitting.”

A few of the soldiers nodded to him as he passed, and one young man asked if he could get a photo with him. Tony wasn't sure photos of him looking like he'd gone through a war were a good thing, but he let the excited kid snap it. After all, this kid had been through a war, too.

Wishing he'd thought to bring a drink, Tony headed towards a tent that signs told him was “MESS”. Before he got there, though, a familiar voice called, “Mister Stark!”

Tony twisted on his heel to face the man as he jogged closer, and said, “All things considered, Epps, drop the 'mister'?”

“Sure, Stark,” the man grinned as he fell into step beside him.

He groaned. “Drop the Stark, too. Just Tony.”

“Sure thing. Thought the docs were gonna keep you locked down for a few more hours, at least. Hell, the whole night.” Epps looked comfortable even without a jacket on, and Tony found himself a little, irrationally, jealous. “Keep you from mixing with the troops.”

“What, civilians can't hang with the boys?” He smirked, slightly.

“Not generally.” Epps laughed.

“And we're not all boys these days.” Another soldier fell into step beside them on Tony's other side, and smirked up at them. “Mr. Stark, Epps.”

“...you're a woman.” Tony blinked at her, then back at Epps, who was grinning, then back at her. “Excuse me for staring, but it's been a very long time since I’ve seen a woman, and soldier or no, you are an _excellent_ female specimen... not that I’m trying to make you feel like I’m ogling, I mean, you are a soldier, I know, so... just noticing.”

“Thanks, sir.” She smirked, and held out her right hand. “Letty Ortiz.”

 _I don't shake hands_ , he almost said.

 _Don't like when people hand me things_ , he very nearly uttered.

Only he didn't, he just took her hand, and shook firmly. “Tony Stark. A pleasure.”

“I've heard,” she smirked, and he was _pretty_ sure that had just gone to a dirty place. “So what brings you down to our little tent city, Tony Stark?”

“Just Tony,” He held up his hand. “I'm looking for Captain Lennox, actually.”

“Ah, well... the Captain's waiting his turn to talk to his wife.” Epps grinned at him. “C'mon, I’ll lead.”

“Oh, I don't need to interrupt - “ Tony started.

“We won't, we'll just wait.” The other man waved away any attempts that Tony had been trying to make to be polite. “It's not every day that he gets to lead a charge to rescue a kidnapped billionaire. I’m sure he'll be fine seeing you.”

“Right then.” Tony shrugged, and walked with them through the paths. “This is some city you all have got here.”

“It's a bit of a shack city, but it's home,” Letty smirked.

Tony snorted.

“The base has been here awhile,” Epps shrugged. “But the population has really exploded the last few years, so it's like a city now. We always lived in tents, though... in the desert, at least you can just move the tent after a sandstorm. A building, not so much.”

“I'm sure such a thing could be constructed...” Tony mused, already trying to work out how such a thing could be designed.

“Your mind is a fascinatingly confused place, isn't it?” Letty arched a brow at him, smirking slightly.

“I like it,” Tony grinned at her.

She snickered. “I bet you do, Tony Stark.”

Epps rolled his eyes.

“So, ah… you live out here all the time, or…?”

“It’s this base or out in the field, but usually we’re at the base,” Epps shrugged, then lifted his hand in greeting at one of the men standing at the entrance of a tent, slightly larger than the others. “That’s where Lennox is, so we’ll just – “

An air raid siren suddenly pierced the air, and all three of their heads snapped up.

“What is that…?” Tony breathed.

“Get to cover!” Letty ordered, catching her hand in the back of Tony’s borrowed jacket and hustling him forward towards the tent that Lennox was apparently in. “Get somewhere under cover!”

There was an explosion somewhere to their left, and the sky, which had finally fallen into the black of night, was suddenly lit up with fire and sparks.

“Cover.” Tony gasped. “Right.”

Lennox came stumbling out of the tent, brows furrowed, already barking orders. He spotted the three of them, and ordered, “Ortiz, get Stark somewhere secure, Epps, you’re with me – “

“No.” Tony gasped.

He gaped at the genius. “All due respect and all, _sir_ , but I can’t take ‘no’ for an answer.”

“No,” Tony said again, and broke into a run. The borrowed coat billowed around his shoulders like a cape, threatening to slip off of his shoulders, but held in place only through sheer heaviness of the jacket itself. Breathless, the metal part of his chest aching, he ran. Clearly he needed to get back into shape, that stay in the cave had not done him any favours. He could hear the soldiers shouting after him – and a few of those he passed tried to catch him – but Tony was fueled by adrenaline and the knowledge that he’d seen something he was fairly sure they hadn’t.

He had seen a black helicopter with identification numbers that had been seared into his mind.

And as he burst out onto the air field, gasping for breath, he wasn’t wrong.

The giant robot was there, again, massive and malevolent, its metallic fingers curled around the metal transformer box, as though trying to pick it up, then it jerked the power supply out of the ground, and the entire base went black. Lennox skidded up beside him, and gasped, “What the _hell_ …?!”

“This thing has tried to kill me twice,” Tony panted.

“Then we need to _get you to cover_.”

Tony, naturally, had no intention of seeking cover until he knew just what, exactly, this thing was.

“Holy…” Letty gasped.

“Epps!” Tony spun to face the man, who was gaping up at the massive machine with a stunned expression. “You had that camera! Give it here!”

The other man gaped at him for a moment, then his military training kicked in, and he jerked himself back to the moment. Tugging the camera off of his neck, he handed it over to Tony, who immediately flicked it on, and – more than comfortable with technology that he happened to have designed himself – started recording, trying to capture as much data as possible on as many different spectrums as possible.

“We have to get Stark _inside_ ,” Lennox started.

There was another shower of sparks, and suddenly the massive black machine spun to face them, its red eyes flicking to consider them – then something shifted on its chest, and machine guns burst out –and began firing. Bullets began slamming to the ground around Tony, and his mind flashed back to the attack in the desert.

Nearly dropping the camera, Tony scrambled back, wide eyed, his back slamming into Epp’s chest.

The other man caught his upper arms, squeezing.

He thought of panicking. Most people don’t seriously contemplate the possibility of having a panic attack, but Tony had been told he wasn’t exactly a typical person. He kept his own mind so neatly compartmentalized that he was able to _choose_ whether or not he wanted to have a panic attack, because he could sort of shove it to the back of his mind, and simply have it later. He had put many things off in his life like this – tears at his parent’s funerals, guilt over cheating on girlfriends (though he’d long stopped feeling _that_ ), or panic attacks in the desert when the convoy had exploded on him. Deciding that a panic attack at this junction would really only create more problems than it would solve, Tony shoved the instinct down, jerked the camera back up, and kept recording, even as a more than capable Epps hauled him along in the other direction.

“We need to get Stark _inside_!” Lennox shouted.

There was an ominous sort of whirring sound, one that actually reminded Tony of the sound a mousetrap spring made when you were cocking the wire back. It was a creaking sort of sound, and the massive black robot shifted forward, its red eyes seeming to glow even brighter. And it moved _fast_ , too, though Tony couldn’t really figure out if it moved fast as a virtue of its massive size, or if it moved fast because it just, well, _moved fast_. If it was more the latter than the former, then he was pretty impressed – it wasn’t easy to program a robot to move fast. They were simply usually too unwieldy and complicated to move quickly.

Except that this robot was moving straight towards their little rag tag group, a massive humanoid hand reaching straight for Tony.

“Oh _shit_ ,” he gasped, and was more than happy to let Epps haul him down into the lee of one of the dunes, and even let the other man throw himself down on top of him, shielding Tony’s body with his own. Panting, Tony squeezed his eyes tightly shut – the fact that there was a dull blue glow in the shadows under Epp’s body, caused by the reactor in his own chest, sort of unnerved him – and tried not to breathe in the sand. Forehead pressed into the grit, he panted, feeling the weight and heavy comfort of the other man’s body pinning him down. It wasn’t that he wanted Epps to get shot instead of him, because holy _shit_ he didn’t want the other man to get shot instead of him, but it was sort of nice to feel protected, to feel like the other man maybe gave a shit about whether or not he _was_ about to get shot.

Of course, Epps was probably only trying to save him because he was a soldier and it was his _job_ , but still. Sort of felt nice to be protected.

There was a deep whirring sound, and a slick sliding breaking sound, like the shovel of a crane cutting into the sand. Tony’s eyes snapped open in the darkness, and he tried to lift his head to see what exactly was going on. “What is _that_?!”

“Head down!” Epps ordered, massive hand – that was probably bigger than Tony’s whole head – pressing to the back of his skull and shoving his face back down into the sand.

He gagged a little on the sand, and spluttered, “Can’t I breathe?”

The other let his head up, but didn’t move his hand from the back of Tony’s skull.

But that slick sand sound was getting louder, and suddenly Tony discovered that he wasn’t actually laying on the sand anymore, he was laying on thick bands of metal, and Epps wasn’t just bracing himself over him anymore, Epps was actually laying on top of Tony, now. The ground was actually out from underneath them, suddenly, and as sand fell down around them, he yelped as they were lifted up into the sky.

“Oh god, oh god, oh god,” Tony gasped, eyes wide. “This is not good.”

Epps twisted, tugging Tony up, bodily, one of his hands curled in the back of Tony’s jacket, hauling him off of his stomach. “No, it isn’t.”

“…we’re in its hand, aren’t we?” Tony asked, panting.

“Yeah,” he said.

“…we’re going to die, aren’t we?” He said, twisting slightly to try and shift forward to look up at the massive robotic beast that was, in fact, carrying them, but he gagged slightly when Epps growled, behind him, and hooked his fingers in the back of Tony’s t-shirt, jerking him back. “Well, I hope _you_ have a plan, because I certainly don’t, and last time I faced this thing, it almost killed me!”

Twisting its wrist, the robot lifted them closer to its face, clearly considering them. Tony knew that robots weren’t exactly capable of facial expressions because they didn’t have moveable faces, but he’d always joked that you could almost “feel” emotions on them. Dummy certainly had a rudimentary form of emotions that he’d designed for him, and he could always tell exactly how his robot was feeling. And at that moment, looking up at the massive humanoid, red-eyed face, Tony felt like it was smirking at him.

“Stark,” it said again, in the midst of its electronic gibberish, and its other hand reached out, as though moving to pluck either him or Epps out of its own grip.

“Cover your eyes!” Tony yelped, and twisted the casing of his arc reactor. This was very rudimentary, but it had been the best he could do on short notice.

Epps, wisely, squeezed his eyes shut.

All that excess energy, the extra he’d packed too tight into the arc reactor after touching this very machine’s own power source, exploded out of his chest. Oh, it hurt, it hurt like the damn devil, but it shredded the thing’s metal fingers, and he and Epps dropped like a stone.

The landing on the dunes wasn’t really all that pleasant, and Tony gagged as he bent double, all of the wind violently knocked out of him. beside him, Epps rolled onto  his hands and knees and gasped, “No offense, Stark, but that probably wasn’t one of your brightest ideas.”

“Yeah, I’ll give you that,” he panted, settling for laying on his back and staring up at the sky.

Lennox abruptly broke into his line of sight. “Tony!”

“…hey, captain,” he smiled faintly. “My American angel come to rescue me again?”

“Yeah, sure. Get up, we have to get out of here.”

He didn’t even protest when the other man grabbed his arms and hauled him to his feet, then slung Tony’s arm across his shoulder and hauled him, half running, through the sand. Tony’s heavy boots made him stumble slightly, not quite able to catch his footing, but the captain didn’t seem to be slowing, and they stumbled along through the sand, towards the desert. He didn’t know where they were going, but at the moment, Tony didn’t really care, either. He just wanted to be _away_ from the explosions and the gunfire filling the desert night behind them.

 

\---

 

“Drink,” Letty ordered, holding a leather canteen out towards Tony.

“Thanks,” he murmured, accepting it and taking a sip of the lukewarm water, tasting the soldier’s lips on the lip of the canteen, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. Usually he would mind. Out here, with the sun beating about a million degrees hotter than it had ever been back in the states – was the sun closer to the planet on this side of the earth, maybe? – down on his head, someone else’s t-shirt wrapped around his head like a turban, he didn’t care how dirty  or contaminated the water was. He just needed something liquid. Swallowing a few times, he relaxed, and closed his eyes. “Thanks,” he said again.

“You all right?” She asked, frowning slightly as she accepted the canteen back, screwing the cap on. “You’re not a solider like us.”

“Yeah, and thank goodness for that, us pretty boy engineers aren’t meant for war,” Tony smirked slightly, scratching his jaw as he looked out over the dune. “Where are we going, anyway?”

“There’s a village, to the north, we have pretty good relations with the villagers there,” Letty nodded, slinging the canteen strap across her chest, hands on her hips. She was about the least feminine person that Tony had met in many years, but she was still gorgeous, in her own way. Almost shockingly so, in some ways. Natural and rough and tumble. Kind of woman that would probably look _damn_ fine in a little black dress, but you’d really rather see dressed in a pair of ripped jeans and your dress shirt, half buried under the hood of your car, oil smeared on her cheek. Eyes bright, she smiled faintly at Tony, and said, “So we’re heading there, to see if they’ve got a phone, we need to call in, let them know what’s going on.”

“Let them know that we’re alive?” He guessed.

“Let them know that _you’re_ alive,” she smirked, amused.

“Hey, I’m sure the government cares a lot about you all, too.” Tony grinned, then glanced up as another man approached, and lifted a hand in greeting. “Hey, Epps.”

“Hey, Stark.” The other man smirked, and nodded at Letty. “How’re you feeling?”

“Sore,” he smirked.

“Somehow, I’m not surprised.” He stopped at Tony’s side, and set his hand on the shorter man’s shoulder, almost making Tony’s knees buckle under the sheer weight of Epps’ heavy hand. Holding out a canteen, he offered, “Water?”

Letty smirked, and lifted her hand. “I’m gonna go check on Lennox.”

“I really ought _not_ to drink all of your water before we end up in that village,” Tony pointed out, smirking slightly. Because yeah, he could sure manage to drink a little more water, that taste Letty had given him had really only managed to make him more thirsty. “So I better not.”

“I got enough.” Epps said, shaking his head slightly, and tugged the canteen off of his belt, offering it to Tony.

“Well… I won’t say no twice.” He smirked, cracking off the cap, and taking another long sip, eyes falling shut. Epps’ bottle tasted different than Letty’s had – like smoke and mint, instead of the lingering taste of motor oil – which sounded awful, when he thought about it that way, but Letty’s water hadn’t tasted like motor oil in a _bad_ way, it had been almost organic. Perhaps his body was starting to feel the full effect of not having slept in about four days. He was going slightly loopy.

“You look like shit,” Epps said, suddenly.

Tony choked on the water, and lowered the canteen, quickly, trying not to spit it out across the sand. The sand would probably like the water, it would greedily drink it up, but damn, they needed it more than the desert did. “Well, _thanks_ for that, I needed some humility.”

He snorted. “Sorry, you just… look like you haven’t slept in about a week.”

“I haven’t.” Tony shrugged, and sipped at the water again. The edge of the thirst was gone, now, that was going to have to be good enough, so he recapped it, and handed the canteen back. Epps hooked it on his belt, but left it there. “It’s been a hell of a week.”

“Building that suit, getting rescued… right?” He smirked, crossing his arms.

“Yeah,” He nodded, lifting his hand to shield his eyes.

A shadow fell over Tony, and he blinked for a moment, startled, then realized that Epps had shifted so that he stood between Tony and the sun, casting a shadow over him.

“…thanks.” He cleared his throat.

“So. That robot thing… you ever seen anything like that before?” Epps asked, looking down at him.

Tony shook his head. “No. Well, _yes_ , actually, I have. Technically. I’ve seen the same robot a few times, now, like I said, it tried to kill me twice before. Remember when you got me out of the cave, and I asked about the helicopter?”

Epps nodded.

“Yeah, well... that robot _was_ that helicopter. It’s – it transforms, I don’t understand how. I’ve been trying to figure out who made it, but it’s not like anything I’ve ever seen before.” Tony frowned, and lifted the camera that still hung around his neck. He’d actually managed to forget that he _had_ it there, earlier, but he’d been holding onto it ever since they’d first seen the thing on the airfield. “I got some good shots of it, on the ultraviolet, infared, and a few other ranges, so I think I’ve got a lot of possible information here… hopefully we’ll be able to get something out of it.”

“Can I…?” He held a hand out towards him.

“Oh, yeah, sure… it’s your camera.” Tony shrugged, smirking, and tugged the strap over his head, handing it over.

Epps flicked through the footage that Tony had captured for a few minutes, then glanced over at him. “What am I looking at? Gimme a hand here?”

“Oh, right,” he stepped back up to Epps’ side, and tapped at the screen. “Okay, flick it over to infared… see that glow, on its chest?”

“Looks like the thing in your chest.” The other murmured, frowning slightly, brows furrowed. He looked serious all the time, even when he was laughing. Tony was starting to get used to that expression.

“Yeah, well… it was the inspiration for it. Check it out… it’s not quite the same as mine, but I think it’s something similar. You see that circle… in the middle? That’s what I got, here.” Tony tapped his own chest, which clinked dully, even through the fabric. “I think it might be an arc reactor. If it wasn’t, I don’t think that the power that backwashed off of it would have fueled my reactor enough for me to have, you know, blasted it like I did. My question is… who the fuck got their hands on technology that my _father_ designed some forty years ago, but wasn’t able to actually make?”

“Mm.” Epps frowned slightly, then nodded at it. “It’s not like any robot I’ve ever seen. And I mean, we use some, right, all those aiming bots, and bomb diffusion units…”

“Yeah.” Tony agreed, nodding. “It’s not like anything I’ve ever seen, either. It’s bigger, for one – and there are limits to how big you can make these things, the technology just isn’t ready for this stuff. But it’s the _shape shifting_ thing that gets me, you know?”

“You mean, ‘how does a helicopter turn into a giant robot that sort of looks like a person’?”

“Yeah, exactly.” Tony frowned, biting his lip.

“If anyone could do that, I sort of imagine it might be you, actually.” Epps smirked, and handed the camera back to Tony. “You didn’t happen to design something and then forget about it?”

“Knowing me… yes.” He shrugged, and slung it around his neck again. “I have a habit of doing that, actually. So how far away is this village, exactly?”

“About a half hour walk, more.” He shrugged, then said, “That machine knew you.”

“Well, it knew who I was,” he agreed.

“Maybe it’s following an instinct to find its mother?” Epps smirked at him, then when Tony squawked, he laughed, and reached over to sling his arm around the other’s shoulder, squeezing Tony against his side for a moment, then clapped his hand on his shoulder again, and said, “C’mon, let’s check with the captain, figure out what the plan is. Smart thing to do would be to find some shelter from the sun during the worst of the heat, but he’s probably just trying to get out to the village as fast as he can.”

“Yeah, makes sense,” Tony nodded, and started walking towards where Letty and Lennox were talking quietly, walking on the line that had been blown along the edge of the dune by the wind. He didn’t fail to notice, by the way, that Epps was still walking so that Tony was still in the shadow cast by his body. “Lennox seems like a bit of a hardass.”

“Sure, he can be.” Epps frowned. “But he’s a lot better than some of the other CO’s I’ve had over the year. He gives a shit about us.”

“Well… you. Not me, though. I mean… aside from the fact that I’m a rich civilian that sort of designs the weapons you use, but… I’m not part of your unit, or anything.”

“You saved my ass from a robot that could have crushed me without a second thought.” Epps said, and Tony looked up sharply at the firm, growling of his voice. If he’d thought Epps looked serious normally, then he looked so serious now that Tony literally had nothing to compare it to. Hell, the man looked intense. “Far as we’re concerned, you’re part of our damn unit, Stark. So suck it up, and get used to being a military man.”

Tony snorted, and raised a hand in greeting. “Hey, Lennox, what are we – “

The ground suddenly exploded under them.

His shoulder slammed to the sand, and Tony sucked in a sharp breath, blinking too quickly, trying to get the sand out of his eyes. Now he understood why Letty had been wearing sunglasses, because the sand was in his eyes. His face was oddly wet, and reaching up to touch just under his nose, he realized that he was bleeding, blood trailing down his face. Awesome. Pushing himself up until he could at least sit, he tried to figure out what the _fuck_ was going on. Naturally, his first thought was that someone had stepped on a landmine. He was used to landmines. Hell, he designed half the landmines that were buried under the sand around here, and of course, he thought that maybe it had been one of the same missiles that had left shrapnel in his heart. If one of these soldiers ended up as a “walking dead” because of _him_ …

That… was not one of his missiles or mines.

That was a massive robot that sort of looked like a scorpion, all black and curled over itself with a sharp tail, just like a real scorpion, flicking back and forth, and it scuttled forward, that tail snapping out as though it wanted to stab one of them.

Correction, wanted to stab _Tony_.

“Holy shit,” he gasped, scrambling back, trying to get out of the way, then howled when someone tackled him around the middle, and they rolled down the dune.

Dizzy and disorientated, Tony lifted his head to gape at Epps, who pointed at him, and said, firmly, “ _Run_.”

Tony didn’t wait to argue.

He scrambled up onto his feet, and began to run.

He could hear gunfire for a few moments, behind him, then suddenly the sounds of feet on the sand, and suddenly Epps’ arm was hooking under his, and tugging him along even faster, as Letty dashed out ahead of them, spinning occasionally to fire behind them at whatever that damn robot thing was, and Lennox, just behind them, shouted, “Move move move! We need to get to cover!”

“What the fuck _is_ that thing?!” Letty howled, firing again, clearly displeased by the fact that the robot didn’t seem to be dying.

“Is it the same as what hit us before?” Epps growled, as he tugged Tony along, quickly.

“No, it’s… it’s different.”

Tony didn’t really know how to explain it, but it _was_ different. It wasn’t the same type of machine that they had faced, before. He’d seen the transforming helicopter robot several times, now, and it seemed… _intelligent_. He knew that made absolutely _no_ fucking sense, because it was a _robot_ , it didn’t actually _have_ intelligence, fuck, it was probably remote controlled. But it _felt_ intelligent, it felt like it was almost of a human intellect, and when it said his name… Tony really felt like it _did_ recognize him. This machine was… animal like. Wild. Like it didn’t know who he was, and didn’t care, because it was like a rabid attack dog that someone had set out on them and it didn’t care who it killed. If that helicopter robot had been coming after them, it wouldn’t have been trying to stab him. Tony had rectified his earlier thoughts. He was pretty damn sure that it wasn’t actually trying to _kill_ him. It just wanted him, for some reason.

Granted, who the hell _wouldn’t_ want Tony, but that was hardly the point.

They crested over a hill, and Tony could have sobbed in relief, if his face wasn’t such a bloody mess and he didn’t have his mind of other things, like trying to get to cover. Because there, spread out below them, was the village they’d been going for. He wasn’t sure if they’d just been running for half an hour – but he was pretty damn sure they hadn’t, actually – or if they had just been closer than Epps had thought. Probably they were closer. After all, wasn’t that the danger of the desert, that it was constantly shifting and changing, so it was almost impossible to figure out where exactly you were going?

“Move!” Epps pushed him forward, and Tony was all too willing to tumble down the hill towards the little village.

There were men and women moving around between the buildings, and a child ran forward, waving his arms and calling for Captain Lennox. Swiping the back of his jacket sleeve under his nose, Tony frowned at the bloody streak it left behind, but let Epps push him along until they were heading towards a small house, and stepped inside. “Seriously, you’re putting me with the women and children, get inside and away from the scary monster, Tony?”

“As it’s trying to kill you? Yes.” He smirked. “Sit tight.”

There was another explosion from outside, and Tony jumped, throwing his arms over his head to protect him as dust and bits of plaster fell from the ceiling. “I think I’d be safer outside!”

“Stay. Here.”

Tony grumbled, but stayed.

For a few moments, anyway. But then there was another explosion, and he glanced back into the house, eyes searching. “Shit, I need a weapon…”

There was movement, behind him, and Tony spun, almost too far, and had to catch his hand on the wall to keep from actually toppling over onto the floor. There was a woman, at the doorway that led into the room in the back of the little house, eyes wide with surprise and fear, but her jaw was set with resolution. Stepping forward, in a way that reminded him of a squirrel darting forward to snatch a peanut out of your fingers that it wasn’t sure you weren’t going to take back a moment later, she held out her hands – one of his rifles laying in her hands. She was offering it like a gift, the brightly coloured light that came through the stained glass window colouring her hands and the gun and her dark coloured clothes. Her face wasn’t even covered, he could see the veil hanging down beside her face, wasn’t that something like a huge taboo in this area? Was she seriously breaking a huge taboo just to make him feel less threatened? Really?

He blinked at her, then at the gun, then back up at her again. “…you’re sure about this?”

The woman smiled slightly, and offered it again. He was starting to think she understood just enough English to know what he’d been talking about, but not actually enough to communicate. Slowly, he shifted forward, and wrapped his hand around the heavy barrel, tugging it towards himself, slinging the leather carrying strap across his chest.

There was more movement, then a child that couldn’t have been more than five darted out from behind his mother’s skirts, and held several clips up for Tony.

Looking down at the boy’s big brown eyes, his mind flicked to Yinsen, sitting in their cave over a stew one night, the little fire crackling in their barrel beside them, casting flickering orange light over the other man’s face. “His name is Sami,” Yinsen had said, “Five years old, such a bright boy. He picks up on things, just like that… he’s a brave boy, he would run out into war if he had the moment to, would try to save the whole world if he could. Biggest smile I’ve ever seen on a boy, he’s beautiful…”

This boy could have been Yinsen’s son.

If only Yinsen’s son wasn’t dead.

“Thank you.” Tony said, taking the clips without any other hesitation, and shoved them in the pockets of his borrowed jacket before darting out of the house.

Running into battle might be stupid, but Tony knew how to _use_ these guns, probably more than that poor woman and her child, and dammit, he had to do _something_ to protect these people, and fuck, Letty, Lennox and Epps were out there, trying to keep these villagers and _himself_ alive, and he wasn’t going to let them get killed trying to keep _his_ sorry ass alive.

It was really like running into a war zone. There were fires everywhere, and as he dashed around the houses, he realized that the scorpion robot was just outside of the village itself, firing some kind of plasma gun at them – was there _really_ such a thing as _plasma guns_ outside of fucking sci fi, and there were projectiles striking against the walls.

Epps and Lennox were crouched behind one of the half walls, and of all things, Lennox looked like he was shouting into a cheap looking cell phone that wasn’t even made by Starktech, dammit, while Epps fired over the top of the wall. Letty was crouched behind another, with a man dressed in local clothing beside her, lobbing what looked like hand grenades at the robot. They hit the thing, bouncing off of its metallic hide, then landed on the ground before exploding. Yep, definitely hand grenades.

Dashing across the little gap, Tony dropped to his knees beside Epps. “Hey, so… how’s it going?”

“…what are you – you’re supposed to be _inside_ , in the damn _house_!” Epps said, shouting over the shooting, and smacked Tony’s shoulder. “Dammit! What the hell were you thinking?”

“I was _thinking_ that you could use some more fire power.” Tony smirked, and stood up straighter on his knees, peering over the edge of the half wall, and firing at the scorpion. It jerked slightly when the bullets hit it – and damn, working out at the range to test his new guns was apparently paying off – but it didn’t really seem to affect it all that much. “… and I’m thinking we could really use a whole lot _more_ fire power. Think we could call in an air strike?”

“That’s what he’s tryin’ to do,” Epps frowned, jerking his jaw at Lennox, who looked as frustrated as they felt.

“Well… good. Figured he’d do that.” Tony frowned, then narrowed his eyes, and adjusted his aim slightly, trying to hit the seams between the scorpion thing’s limbs and it’s body. There were gaps there, where the joints were, so he was hoping that maybe he could hit some of the vital electronic bits inside its body. Well. Excellent. That appeared to… seriously piss the thing off, now. “Oh, holy shit, I think I just pissed it off.”

“Oh _shit_ , keep _firing_!” Epps shouted, waving at Letty and her civilian companion. “ _Fire_!”

Tony hoped to all shit that Letty had heard, because he was desperately firing at the robot, trying to knock it back, trying to _delay_ it.

Tugging a smoke grenade out of his belt, Epps whipped them just to the left of the robot, and orange smoke spilled out of it, filling the air. “Tell them to aim for the orange smoke!” He shouted at Lennox, who relayed the message into the phone, almost desperately.

Their gunfire seemed to keep the machine at bay at least enough that it wasn’t stabbing any of them – then they heard a beautiful sound, and Tony looked up to see a plane swinging over their location. “ _Yes_.”

The scorpion robot was not, apparently, quite as happy to see the planes.

It really also didn’t seem happy to see the missiles that they fired at it.

Parts of it were blasted off, a good chunk of its scorpion tail flicking away across the sand, like a lizard’s might, if you hacked it off, then Tony saw it do something he really hadn’t expected. The machine wiggled and squirmed, then _dove into the sand_ , disappearing under the surface of the sand like a water moccasin diving under the surface of a lake, and a moment later, it was gone, just that hunk of its tail and one of its many scrambling legs laying on the sand.

“Oh thank god and baby Jesus,” Tony groaned, and slumped back into the wall, eyes falling shut, rifling cooling in his lap. “For the glory that is the American Military.”

Lennox snorted, standing to flag the plane.

“You should do a recruiting campaign,” Epps smirked, dropping down beside him, shoulder pressed to Tony’s shoulder.

“Mmm. I’ll consider it.”

 

\---

 

The scorpion’s tail lay on a table between them, strapped down as Lennox and Letty stood on one side, and Epps and Tony stood on the other, considering it. There was a military tech at the one end of the table, eyes wide as he looked down at the thing, but Tony was talking extremely quickly, explaining all the finer points of the robot’s construction and all of the things they had noticed.

There were a lot of things he had noticed.

They had the Secretary of the Defense on the line, who was a man that Tony had had a good many drinks with, both before and during his term in office, so Tony was more than comfortable telling this man everything they had learned.

Finally, he figured he’d told him everything he had learned, and they finished the call.

And then Tony found himself a quiet corner of the plane – not that planes really _had_ quiet corners, exactly, but did as good as he could – and settled down on the floor, curled into the corner, and flicked through the settings of the camera that he had been using to record the robot. He’d sent the videos on through the satellite connection the plane had established with the Ministry of Defense, and pulled up the sound file.

He hadn’t mentioned the sound file.

Because he’d _sort_ of managed to leave one little fact out in the briefing that he’d given, and thank god no one else had managed to provide it, which was that _his name_ appeared in the middle of the strange sounds that the robot had been making.

Closing his eyes, Tony leaned back against the wall of the plane, feeling it rumble under and around him, like a dull thrumming as they headed back towards America, because apparently they were needed back stateside at the earliest convenience.  Tony was pretty sure he wasn’t just going to be let go to head back to California and his house, either, he was going to be dragged back to the same base that the others were destined for, because there had been discussion of the words ‘debriefing’ and ‘sensitivity’ and ‘classified’. Sighing softly, he let the sound of the robot’s voice wash over him like water over a rock in a river, curling around his ears and into his brain, wriggling about inside his mind. He couldn’t figure out what the voice _meant_ , but he knew it had to be something important. It _had_ to be.

Epps dropped heavily beside him, and Tony opened a single eye, looking up at him.

“Hey,” the other said.

“Hey,” Tony murmured, and instead of flicking the sound off, he just flicked it back to the beginning, and had the sound clip start again from when he’d started recording. Lennox was sitting up beside the tail, looking down at it like it held all the mysteries of the universe – and Tony had checked, it didn’t, there wasn’t enough of it _there_ to explain all the mysteries – and Letty was talking to the pilot, sprawled over a chair in the cockpit. “So. Decided to hang with the civvie a little longer?”

“Yeah,” Epps smirked, and held out the canteen.

“Sorry, not really in the mood for desert water this time,” he said, closing his eyes again.

Epps wiggled the canteen a little. “It’s not desert water. It’s rum.”

“Oh thank god, you are a god among men,” Tony groaned, and set the camera down in his lap as he reached out to take the canteen, twisting the cap open to take a long, slow swig of it. It burned on the way down, and it burned _good_ on the way down. “Mmm… where’d you get this?”

“Grabbed it from the pilot. Apparently he’d figured that the men might need it, if he was picking them up from the middle of the desert claiming that there was a robot attacking them.”

“Well, he wasn’t wrong.” Tony said, lowering the canteen and licking his lips as he handed it back to Epps. He watched the other man drink for a moment, adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed, then held his hand back out for it again. He caught that minty smoke on the lip of the canteen again, when he swallowed. “You know… if you ever decide to leave the military… I think you got a good future for you in security.”

Epps snorted. “Excuse me? You’re trying to get me to quit the forces to go into _security_?”

“My security.” Tony corrected. “I like a man that knows how to protect a man, even when he does something as shit headedly stupid as running back into battle even after he was told to keep the hell out of it.”

“I’ll remember that,” he smirked, stretching.

Tony glanced up at him. “…are you trying to pull the ‘arm around my shoulders’ routine?”

“Are you asking me to?”

He mused about that for a moment, thoughtfully, then shrugged as he took another swallow of the rum, closing his eyes. “I wouldn’t complain.”

“Let me know when that changes from ‘wouldn’t complain’ to ‘yes please’, a’right?” Epps plucked the camera out of Tony’s fingers, and flicked the sound back to the beginning again. “You know, I know it’s just a machine and it’s probably a recording and all, but… well, it _sounds_ like a man, you know? When it says your name, there’s emotion there.”

“Yeah,” Tony agreed, frowning slightly. On one hand, he was actually sort of impressed with Epps’ ‘let me know when you’re serious’ attitude, because that wasn’t something he heard all that often, but dammit, he’d had a stressful few months and he figured he either needed a couple supermodels or a _hell_ of a man to fuck his stress away with, and Epps would sort of fit that category nicely. Well, it could be worse, he supposed. But seriously, man, people usually jumped all over themselves for a chance to sleep with Tony Stark, didn’t say, _let me know when it changes from ‘wouldn’t complain’ to ‘yes please’,_ dammit! “Ah… yeah, there’s some kind of emotion there, it sort of sounds pissed off, to me.”

“No.” Epps shook his head, and flicked the sound back a little, so that the other could hear what he’d heard again. “He doesn’t sound pissed. He sounds… _amazed_.”

“Amazed?” He blinked at him.

“Yeah, like… like a teenaged girl would sound like, if they were walking along the street and suddenly… I dunno, Justin Timberlake or someone showed up. Like he can’t quite believe what he’s seeing.”

“Never say Justin Timberlake’s name again,” Tony snickered, grinning. “And definitely don’t compare me to him.”

“Yes sir,” the other smirked, and tapped the screen of the camera. “That’s what he sounds like, though.”

“I’m not sure robots _have_ genders.” He smirked. “Like… it’s a machine.”

“ _That_ is a man’s voice.”

Frowning, he leaned over, more firmly against Epps’ side because _fuck you buddy_ , that’s why, and listened closer to the sound. “A pretty damn high pitched man’s voice.”

“It’s like the singing in all those damn pop songs.” Epps smirked even broader, and nudged Tony’s arm, sort of playfully. “Like Justin Timberlake.”

“Oh god, stop with the Justin Timberlake…” he groaned, letting his head fall back against the wall behind them. “You know I’ve _met_ that asshole? Him and his blond hair and his smug grins and his stupid little swagger, and… augh.”

“You sure you don’t want _him_ to change the answer to _yes please_?” He arched a brow.

“Shut up.” Tony smirked, shaking his head.

Epps just snickered.

Letting the sound file start again from the beginning, Tony closed his eyes as he leaned on Epps’ strong shoulder, and let the sound wash over the both of them. It was quiet, but loud enough that he was able to focus on it, letting the sound twist through his ears.

But then Epps started humming along with it.

“…what are you doing?” He looked up, frowning slightly.

“Sorry… was trying to figure out the pattern.”

“No… that’s… that’s the _pattern_.” Tony pointed at him, and said, “Do it again!”

The other arched a brow.

“Shut up, stop looking at me like that, and _do that again_!” Tony said, firmly, still pointing at the other man. “Do it again!”

Epps rolled his eyes, then hummed along with the sound again for a moment, making a little pattern out of it.

“That’s _it_!” His eyes lighting up, Tony reached up to cup the larger man’s jaw, then kissed him firmly, _let me know when it’s a yes please_ be damned, then scrambled to his feet, and dashed for the crappy computers that had been set up beside the tail, thumping the camera down on the table and plugging it in as he let out a whoop of joy. That was _it_ , that was exactly it, he knew that pattern, it was an algorithm, he’d had a professor back when he was at school that had used to joke that all math could be turned into music – and it wasn’t like he was wrong because Tony was definitely a fan of mathcore – and this stupid little pattern was one that the professor had played again and again, claiming that it was one of the recordings that had been retrieved from the SETI satellite feeds. Space dust translated into math, he’d said.

It wasn’t space dust.

It was…

It was _non human_.

Yinsen was right. These weren’t constructed by humans, no humans could _ever_ make anything like this, it was some kind of… robotic life form. _Organic_ robotic life form. A robot that had grown the way that humans grew.

Fucking brilliant.

Like… he was never going to find anything as incredible as this anywhere else in the universe, that little song that Epps had been humming was the communication of a _living robot life form_.

This was like… discovering that the world was round. That was exactly how he thought of this, scientifically, that’s what it had to be compared to.

“So… I take it I did good?” Epps asked, with a smirk, as he leaned over Tony’s shoulders, a hand resting on either side of him on the table.

“Oh hell yes. Very good.” Tony agreed, working on applying that algorithm to the sound. It wasn’t as easy to apply a series of mathematical equations to _sound_ as he might have expected, but it could totally be done, he knew that. It just might _take_ him awhile, especially since this was not his usual computer layout, and damn, this would be a whole lot easier to do with his computer set up and JARVIS there to give him a hand. He knew he could do it, though.

Okay, the heat of Epps leaning over his shoulder, jaw resting against the side of Tony’s neck might be a little distracting, though.

“You need a hand?” The other breathed.

Tony swallowed. “I can think of _several_ ways in which your hands could be involved in helping me, but I’m fairly sure that you don’t want to be doing any of those in front of your commanding officer. Unfortunately. I think Lennox might be into watching.”

“Sure.” He snorted, and leaned back.

He _very_ nearly pulled Epps back.

“I’m gonna go let the captain know you’ve figured it out. Try and get it translated before I get back with him, hm?”

“Okay, _now_ you’re being a brat,” Tony said, but his attention was already slipping off of ‘okay, like where this is going’ to ‘I am performing mad science baby’, and his fingers were flying across the crappy keyboard. It wasn’t one of his normal ones, which had been specifically designed to fit his hands and the way that his mind worked, but at least it was a _keyboard_ , and he was able to pound the math he needed to use into the computer.

“Tony? Epps tells me you’ve figured out the sounds you caught?”

"It's not perfect, but it's - ha!" Tony shouted, triumphantly, grinning wildly at the others. "I did it! I cracked it!"  
  
Symbols began to fill the screen, like a rain shower of strange drawings that streamed down towards the bottom of the page, just filling up the screen. A moment later, a series of complicated patterns appeared within the symbols, cutting them into distinct columns.  
  
"That don't look like any language I've ever seen," Letty frowned, leaning over Lennox's shoulder.  
  
"That’s because it's not human." Tony said, rather pleased with himself. "It's organic all right, it's been created, but it's been created by machines. So there is an inherent... Pattern..." His fingers continued flying across the keyboard, rapid and feverish. "And I have just cracked it, because I am that good, lady and gentlemen."  
  
The symbols changed, being replaced with English lettering.  
  
Leaning over his shoulder, Lennox read aloud, "Ladiesman217, eBay auction item 21153, glasses... Samuel James Wit... Witwicky. Tony Stark. Project Ice Man... What the hell is this, Tony?"  
  
"No idea," he grinned. "But I am so damn looking forward to figuring out."

 

\---

 

The moment they landed stateside, Tony started demanding a cell phone from one of the military aides, and though they protested that he was really in a moment of national security and that they couldn’t really give him a _cell phone_ , Tony stepped a little bit closer to the man and snarled that he would absolutely make his life _miserable_ if he didn’t get him a cell phone, and a few minutes later, he was leaning against the wall of the air hanger they were apparently going to be “debriefed” in, thumbs tapping quickly on the screen of the Stark Phone.

He was on the internet, and no, he didn’t feel bad that he was probably wracking this guy’s data bill up, because he had to figure this out.

Ebay auction 21153 turned out to be a pair of antique glasses that had apparently belonged to an explorer named Archibald Witwicky. A little search through the internet told him that Archibald Witwicky had been a well known explorer that had been one of the first to map the Arctic circle, but while there, he had apparently seen something that had made him go insane. Or maybe not insane, though that was definitely the words the Wikipedia article used, but maybe more obsessed with something that everyone else thought had been a hallucination. A giant man trapped under the ice of the arctic.

On one of the websites, he even found an illustration that had apparently been done based on Archibald Witwicky’s descriptions of it, all giant and skeletal and sort of terrifying looking.

And looked, in Tony’s mind, very much like a giant robot.

Interesting.

Sector Seven had far less information, even when he dug into the deeper and darker places of the internet, but he did finally find that there was a listing of government agents that were getting paid from an apparently Sector Seven fund, so whether it was hidden or not, that at least told him that there _was_ such a thing as a part of the American government. And they, apparently, knew about this Project Iceman.

Frowning slightly, he considered the information. He was pretty damn sure that he might have eventually made this connection, but cracking this sound file sort of just meant that he got the required information a whole hell of a lot sooner.

As for Samuel James Witwicky, he was apparently the culmination of all of these pieces of information – he was user ladiesman217, he had posted the eBay auction, he was the great grandfather of Archibald…

And he lived, apparently, in South Gate, California.

“You look very serious.”

Tony didn’t look up from his borrowed phone as he continued typing, quickly. “Thank you for that, Epps, now… can you get me to California about… ten minutes ago? I need to get there.”

“Ah… no, I don’t think I can, because we’re on lock down at the moment.” He smirked, shaking his head slightly.

Flipping the phone around to face the other, he said, calmly, “Lookit this. See this kid, right here? His name is Sam Witwicky, and he was arrested last night after he put in a call to the local PD, freaking out because his car had just stolen itself and then turned into a giant robot. They let him go because they decided, in the end, that he’d just been having some kind of drug induced hallucination – though his test was clean – and he’s presumably at home, right now, freaking out about having seen something _pretty_ much the same as what we saw yesterday, and while I would love to say that we should let them debrief us… those giant robots are trying to find him the same way they’re trying to find me, and hello, we have noticed that they sort of don’t mind having some collateral damage to get to us. So. Before the government freaks out and takes their own _sweet_ time finding that kid… I need to get there _now_ and see if Sam knows what, exactly, is going on here.”

Epps took a deep breath, and glanced over his shoulder at Lennox. “I’ll suggest it to the captain, but… we don’t have anything that’s gonna get there faster than the actual military would.”

“I do, and I’ve already made some calls.” Tony shoved the phone in his jacket pocket as a whirr of one of his private experimental jet’s engines roared outside. He’d give it back, eventually, if he actually managed to outlive whatever it was those robots wanted from him, but at the moment, he sort of figured that it was a martial law thing. Okay, martial law hadn’t been declared, but it probably ought to be.

“…you called… no, actually, I’m not even surprised by this.” Epps sighed, and took a deep breath before calling for Captain Lennox.

The captain was naturally skeptical about leaving the army base without authorization – because that, as he pointed out, was in fact being Absent Without Leave – but even he had to admit that Tony was probably right. If those robots were trying to find this Sam kid, than not only Sam but the entirety of California were probably in danger. Especially if the kid had already seen at least one of them. Lennox had frowned, then abruptly turned to holler for Letty to get her _ass_ over there, then informed Tony that himself, Epps and Letty would just  have to be Tony’s military escort so that he wouldn’t _exactly_ be trying to flee military custody.

He wasn’t exactly surprised that Pepper was waiting for them on the plane.

“ _Tony_!” She said, eyes bright as she darted forward, then hesitated, almost hugging him but not quite, and settled for falling back, smiling hopefully. “You… are an absolute mess.”

“Thanks, Pep, I needed that,” Tony snorted, and stepped past her into the plane, his “military escort” following him.

“I’m serious. You’re a _mess_. You have blood all over you face, and _what_ are you wearing?”

He looked down at himself. “…I dunno.”

“Someone else’s clothes.” Lennox said, and offered his hand to Pepper. “Captain William Lennox, ma’am.”

She shook his hand, firmly, and nodded. “Pepper Potts. I’m Tony’s assistant, thank you for bringing him back alive. I wouldn’t be surprised if you nearly killed him a thousand times over, but… thank you for bringing him back alive.”

“It was an honour.” He nodded.

“Really, you can meet everyone later,” Tony held up his hands. “I need to get moving. Tell the pilot we need to get to South Gate, California. Now.”

Pepper frowned for a moment, then nodded, and headed for the front of the plane.

“I’m gonna go get cleaned up.” Tony groaned softly, running his hand through his hair, and headed for the bathroom.

Holy shit, Pepper wasn’t wrong, he realized when he looked in the mirror. He really _did_ look awful. He looked… like shit. The nosebleed from yesterday had dried all over the lower half of his face, down around his mouth and chin, and ugh, why did Epps even _let_ him kiss him yesterday? That must have been disgusting. His clothes weren’t in much a better state, really, because they were not only way too large for him, but they were desperately dirty and bloody. Why had that woman in Afghanistan helped him, come to think of it? He must have looked like some kind of terrifying horror. This was not, as it was, his best look.

About a half hour later, Tony headed back out into the main body of the plane. He’d managed to get himself a little less filthy, though he wished he’d managed to find a shower somewhere, because he still stunk of a cave in Afghanistan, under the layer of soap and cologne, but he’d cleaned as well as he could in a sink, and dressed in a pair of jeans and a t-shirt that he was sure that Pepper had arranged for him. Lennox looked up when he came in, and smirked.

“Yeah, I know, I know,” Tony shook his head. “I look a touch more civilized.”

Epps looked him up and down, slowly, then smirked as he crossed his arms over his chest. “That looks a little bit more like the Tony Stark I was expecting to see when I heard that this was who we were rescuing.”

“Naw, you were expecting me to be wearing a tie, and you know it,” he rubbed the top of the other man’s bald head, and sank bonelessly into the seat beside him.

“So why are we going to California, Tony?” Pepper said, frowning slightly.

He glanced at Lennox, and yes, fuck your military rules, he shifted over a little so that he was leaning on Epps’ shoulder. He was big and strong and muscular, dammit, and at the moment, he was seriously considering hauling him into the bathroom for a foray into the mile high club. They could deal with him just leaning on him. “So… how much am I allowed to tell her?”

“This is a matter of international military security…” Lennox started, then paused. “Letty already told her about the robots.”

“Ah, well, then, that makes this so much easier.” He grinned at Pepper. “Robots. We need to go to California to find the _other_ person in the world that these robots are trying to find. So. California, as we need to find Samuel Witwicky.”

“…oh.” She frowned slightly. “Somehow I’m not surprised.”

“So… am I going to get my lecture about how I’m reckless and I nearly got myself killed and nearly killed the company now?” Tony asked, grinning at his assistant, who rolled her eyes, and shook her head. “Because I’ve been waiting for it since I set foot on American soil.”

“No.” She said, shaking her head, and didn’t even lift her head when the air hostesses stepped out of the galley with trays, and started handing out plates, quietly. He knew air hostess wasn’t technically the politically correct term that people were using these days, but frankly, his air hostesses were half dressed incredibly attractive tarts that tended to dance on poles through the flight, so that was… yeah, he went with air hostess when he thought about them. Right now, though, they were handing out plates that had hamburgers and French fries on, and good god, Tony was never so happy to see tarts in short skirts before. They looked _delicious_.

The hamburgers, that is.

Taking his own plate, Tony started eating, eagerly, relieved. He had managed to get some army rations at the base and on the plane yesterday, but army rations were nothing compared to hamburgers.

“Try not to choke yourself on that,” Letty snickered, where she sat next to Pepper, casually sort of draped over the seat beside her.

“Yes ma’am,” he drawled, licking his lips.

“Stop teasing the poor billionaire, he’s new at this,” Epps smirked, ruffling Tony’s hair.

He yelped, and ducked away from his hand. “Oi, I just managed to style that damn mess… could use a better trim, but… at least I _shaved_. Feel a little more human…”

“Look a little less bloody.” He shot back, taking another bite of his own hamburger.

“For the record, you might want have _mentioned_ something about that.” Tony said, suddenly, pointing at Epps. “With the blood.”

“Why exactly did the blood matter?” Lennox raised an eyebrow.

“Because I was a bloody _mess_ , obviously.” Tony rolled his eyes, relaxed against the other man’s shoulder.

“And because, if you did a DNA test, I’m pretty sure the blood dried on Epps’ face is probably Tony’s, too, so…” Letty smirked, popping a French fry in her own mouth. “So how long much longer are we gonna be in the air? Because I was thinking we probably ought to be getting ourselves mission prepped for whatever exactly it is we’re supposed to be doing when we get there… what exactly _are_ we supposed to be doing when we get there?”

“Finding Sam Witwicky.” Tony shrugged, hoping to all hell Letty stopped digging at things before she got Epps in trouble, because _dammit_ he was hoping to get laid before Epps got himself court marshaled. “Which… speaking of, I had an idea. Pepper, darling, _please_ tell me you brought some of my computers with you?”

“…I brought a tablet?” She said, after a moment. “I didn’t bring a computer because I sort of thought you probably ought to be sleeping, or something, instead of trying to program.”

“Oi, not cool.” He grumbled, but wriggled his fingers out at her. “Tablet me, then.”

Shaking her head, Pepper stood, and headed over to one of the storage compartments, and a moment later, offered him his tablet.

Within seconds, Tony was typing rapidly on the touch screen, lost in the numbers and the math. He was content to let Letty and Lennox entertain Pepper, keeping her from getting distracting or letting her ask the thousand questions that had to be clamouring to be answered in her mind. Epps sat silently beside him, and lightly brushed his fingertips up and down the back of Tony’s neck, and _that_ was definitely very nice. Sort of managed to comfort without actually distracting, so he kept his tablet on his lap and typed rapidly, just trying to get through the information as quickly as possible as he programmed based on the slightly crazy idea he’d had and the even crazier things he’d noticed on his recordings.

“Okay.” He said, suddenly, and didn’t flinch when everyone jumped slightly to look up at him. “Do we have any scanners?”

“Tony, are you seriously asking if I brought any of your _scanners_?” Pepper sighed.

“Yes.” He said, again.

“ _No_ , we didn’t bring any scanners.”

“Well then, I’ll just need to steal some of the ones the plane has. Be right back, ladies and gentlemen…” Tony stood, and darted towards the panel room right behind the cockpit, where he knew that there was going to be two – he could take one, and the plane would be just fine. Sitting on the floor, he started working on the wiring, humming slightly as he worked.

“Tony…” Pepper sighed softly, leaning over his shoulder. “Why are you stealing scanners from your own plane?”

“Because I made an observation.” He leaned back to look up at her, slightly upside down, grinning, then went back to work on the wiring. He just needed one scanner. “Their power sources run on a very particular frequency, as very particular type of – of all things – gamma radiation. So I know exactly what I’m looking for, I just need to _find_ it. I think I can track the kid with it, because obviously, if they’re trying to get him too, they’re going to try and find him, too. So… they’re probably stalking him like they’re stalking me.”

“Ah.” She nodded, and lowered her voice. “And Sergeant Epps?”

 “What about him?” He detached some of the wires, tugging out the scanner.

“Your plan for him is… what, exactly?”

“What is my plan, generally, when it comes to incredibly attractive men that could probably bench press me without breaking a sweat, Pepper?” Tony pointed out.

“Well, you either conscript them to be a bodyguard, your best friend, or a bed partner.” Pepper crouched beside him, and he glanced at her, admiring how she still managed to look perfectly in control and neat as anything crouched like that, while he was pretty sure that if he was wearing terrifying heels like hers he’d have fallen over ages ago. She looked delicate and neat, he would look like a mess in high heels. “So which is his future, Tony?”

“I told him he ought to quit the military and come work for Starktech.” Tony said, turning the scanner over in his hands, then hooking it up to his tablet, and began streaming the new programming into it. He glanced up at her, though, a moment later, and grinned, “Bed, if at all possible.”

“Somehow I’m not surprised. Try not to get him fired.” She shook her head, then squeezed his shoulder, and stood. “Behave.”

“Oh c’mon, this is _me_ you’re asking,” he rolled his eyes.

“Yeah, you’re right, I should be handcuffing you to the wall.” Pepper said, calmly.

“You suck, darling,” he sang.

“Not as much as you plan to, apparently.” She said, calmly, and patted Tony’s shoulder before she headed back into the body of the plane, and left Tony sitting behind on the floor, laughing his ass off.

 

\---

 

“You know this seems more than a little crazy, right?”

Tony didn’t look up from the tablet, on which the screen _pinged_ , over and over, as he tracked the movement of a gamma signature that was exactly like the one he’d encountered in Afghanistan. He did, however, answer Lennox, with a comment of, “You’ll find, Lennox, that a lot of things about Stark are more than a little crazy.”

“Somehow, I’m not surprised.” He snorted.

The signal was getting louder, as Tony looked up, frowning. They were standing just beyond the edges of a massive bridge, under which there were probably hundreds of the carcasses of cars, and the remains of probably a good dozen homeless camps. He couldn’t see any movement there, aside from the lazy listing of tarps that hung from the bridge, silently. It was eerie, really. Empty and a little dark despite it being the middle of the day. “All right, look… you go left, I’ll go right.”

“Are you _really_ sure splitting up is a good idea?” Lennox arched a brow.

“Yes.” Tony smirked at him. “Hell, I’ve managed to stay alive for the last three months or so, despite being nearly killed about forty times or so, I think I can find a kid hiding out under a bridge.”

The other paused, then nodded, grudgingly, and tapped the walkie talkie that hung from Tony’s belt. “ _Call_ if you need help.”

“Yes sir,” he snickered, and headed under the bridge.

It was silent, under here, almost eerily so. He didn’t hear any birds or any animals, just the sound of his own footsteps landing grittily on the ground.

The next thing that happened, Tony didn’t actually hear coming.

He sure _felt_ it, though.

There was a sudden collision, an explosion of pain and impact, then he went flying _again_ goddammit and Tony slammed against the concrete, gasping as his tablet and scanner skittered away across the concrete, landing under one of the car carcasses. There was the clatter of what sounded like a bicycle hitting the pavement, then another person groaning, pathetically, “Oh, that was _awesome_.”

Sitting up, Tony ran his hand through his hair, and panted as he looked at the person he’d made impact with.

Teenaged, dirty and sweat sheened, eyes wide with terror, panting for breath. Strokes t-shirt, good taste, though it was a little scuffed up, possibly by the impact, scrambling to sit up. Familiar, actually.

“Sam?” Tony panted.

The boy’s eyes snapped to his, wide eyed, and he said, “Wait, what?”

“Sam Witwicky?” He said, sitting up a little straighter.

“Yeah. Who the _hell_ are you?”

“Tony Stark. Come on, I think we really need to get you the hell out of here, before they figure out we’re both here, and – “

“You are _not_ Tony Stark. No way. No fucking _way_ are you Tony – you look an awful lot like… Tony… Stark.”

“That’s because I _am_ Tony Stark.” He pushed himself to his feet, cracking his shoulders. “Damn, you hit pretty hard. Okay, seriously, we need to get out of here before the robots figure out we’re here.”

Sam made a choking sound.

Tony glanced at him.

“…the robots… you’ve seen them?”

“Yeah, I’ve seen them.” He nodded, then looked up at the familiar “w _hoop-whoop_ ” of a police siren. “Huh, Lennox must have gotten police backup, where is – “

Only the approaching police car was moving a lot faster than he’d anticipated. A _lot_ faster than any police car really ought to be moving, come to think of it, and Tony’s eyes widened as he scrambled back, half bending to catch Sam’s arm, hauling him to his feet. “Run! _Run_ , it’s not actually a cop car, it’s – _run_!”

Sam, to his credit, didn’t argue.

Feet pounding on the pavement, the two of them dashed across the limited space that they had, trying desperately to just get _away_ , and yes, Tony scrambled to grab his walkie talkie, gasping out, “Lennox, _Lennox_ , I found him but it’s trying to – son of a bitch!” He yelped as a bumper slammed against the back of his legs, and they both went down, hard. The walkie talkie skidded away across the ground. He had a habit, apparently, or losing h is tech. Tony was starting to think he really ought to invest in a set of bungie cords with which he could attach everything to himself. Because _this_? This was frustrating.

“Oh god, we’re going to die,” Sam gasped, rolling onto his back, gaping up at the cop car.

“Try _not_ to think that way,” Tony panted, pushing at the bumper with his feet, then yelped with the engine roared – and the cop car started to change. Just like he had seen in the desert with the helicopter, it started to shift up and in and out and within seconds it became a massive humanoid shape, with evil looking red eyes looking down at them. Its massive metal hands slammed down on the ground on either side of Tony and Sam, pinning them both in place, then in a metallic voice, it roared, “Are you user ladiesman217?!”

“What?!” Sam yelped.

“No!” Tony gasped.

The machine snarled – yes, apparently machine can _snarl_ – and roared, “ _Are you user ladiesman217_?!”

“Yes!” The teenager scrambled, eyes wide. “S – so?”

“Where is eBay item 21153? _Where are the glasses_?!”

“What the hell are you _talking_ about?!” Sam howled, eyes wide, but didn’t actually protest when Tony pushed at his shoulder, and they both scrambled up from under the machine, running like their lives depended on it. For that matter, their lives actually probably _did_ depend on it. Oh god. “It’s going to _kill_ us!”

“It might,” Tony gasped, agreeing as they ran. “Go go go go _go_!”

Except that as they ran, and Tony was sorry, no matter _how_ good of shape they were in, there was no freaking way they were going to outrun that frigging machine because it was huge and powerful and had legs that were substantially larger than any human legs could ever be, they were not really covering as much ground as they needed to. Tony had a hold on the other’s hand as they ran, trying to haul him along with him, and shouldn’t the teenager technically be able to run faster than him? Probably, but then again, the teenager hadn’t just spent three months in a cave in Afghanistan because of one of these robots, so maybe he didn’t know exactly how terrified he should be of them. They _had_ to get further, faster…

A piece of shit yellow Camaro skidded into a spin just in front of them, and the passenger side door swung open.

Tony would ask, exactly, how a car had managed to drive itself, except that he was pretty damn sure that the reason had something to do with the same reason that a cop car was chasing them on two feet.

“…get in my car,” Sam said, suddenly, eyes wide.

That was a statement Tony was somewhat used to hearing under _very_ different circumstances. You know, typically by a super model or some gorgeously muscular prize fighter, those that intended to take him to somewhere that involved a bed or at least a couch or a wall or something somewhere. It wasn’t usually uttered by teenagers that he was running for his life with. But hey, Tony could adapt.

So he scrambled into the passenger seat of the Camaro, and tugged Sam in behind him – handy, wasn’t it, not letting go of his hand to begin with – and wasn’t even surprised when the door slammed shut behind them and the car hammered down its own throttle.

Panting, Tony slumped across the front seat of the car for a moment, relieved that this car at least had bench seats. Those older sports cars always did, it was more comfortable to lie on, that was for sure. Closing his eyes for a moment, he finally pushed himself up, twisting to look out the back window. They were… definitely being chased by that cop car robot, which had become a cop car again. “Well, it’s an exciting life you lead, Sam. And here I thought coming back to the states would mean my life would calm down a little.”

“What is going _on_?!” Sam yelped, gaping at him.

“I think it has something to do with your grandfather, actually. Archibald.” Tony slumped back in the seat, closing his eyes. After all, the _car_ was driving, not them, so he didn’t need to actually pay attention to the chase itself. He was just so _worn out_ from all of the adrenaline. “They want his glasses. They also want me, but I don’t know why. I’m going to assume we’re sitting in one right now, aren’t we?”

Sam licked his lips. “I think so.”

“Right.” Tony nodded, running his hand through his hair. “…please tell me this one isn’t quite as evil?”

“Well, it’s… not killing us?” He suggested, then yelped as the car skidded around a tight turn, and grabbed a hold of Tony to keep them both from being thrown across the car. “So – so that’s gotta be good, right?”

“Probably.” He agreed, grabbing the dashboard.

The chase went on for a long time. A lot longer than Tony had expected, actually, as they skidded through the streets of South Gate, then off of surface streets and onto the Freeway. They watched the sun set around them as they went, the adrenaline fading until they were actually lulled half to sleep in the cab of that car, still skidding along the streets as the Camaro tried – and failed, to lose the cop car. What this must look like to people outside of the situation…

“So how come you’re not freaked out about this?” Sam asked, suddenly.

Tony reluctantly lifted his head from where it had fallen on the teenager’s shoulder – shut up, he was exhausted and hadn’t really had any sleep in close to a week now, and Sam had an oddly comfortable shoulder – and sighed. “I could ask you the same question. Why aren’t _you_ freaked out about this?”

“I am _completely_ freaked out.” He shuddered. “I’m just… I didn’t sleep last night because my car went all… living thing on me, and it has been a _long_ twenty four hours.”

“Yeah, well… I haven’t slept in a week.” Tony shrugged. “So I’m too tired to freak out.”

“Oh.” He said, after a moment, considering that. “…shouldn’t we be like… freaking out, and panicking, and… flailing, and… doing anything other than just sitting here like we’re going on a nice road trip somewhere?”

“What good, exactly, would panic do us?”

Sam frowned slightly, and stretched. “You do make a good point. I guess I hadn’t really thought of it that way… but you’re right. It wouldn’t do us any good. So… what’s up with you? Why are you involved with this? I mean… you’re supposed to be a genius billionaire… who apparently went missing in Afghanistan like… six months ago, so… why are you here, in California, trying to find me?”

“Three months. And because the robots are trying to find you.” Tony shrugged, and shifted to sit up straighter, looking back out the rear window. They were off of the freeway again, onto the surface streets, so he wasn’t sure where exactly they were going now. He sort of had to trust the robot car, he guessed.

“And you know that… how?”

“Because I figured out how to translate their language.” He grinned at him.

The kids eyes lit up. “ _Seriously_?”

“Genius billionaire, remember?” Tony snickered, and watched the cop car _still_ fucking chasing them. Just seeing it made his heart skip a beat a little, but at least it was still behind them. Crappy looking or not, this Camaro was pretty damn fast. “Besides… the things are after me, too. So I sort of figured I had a horse in the race, so… I’ve been trying to figure it out.”

“Why do they want you, you think?” He frowned slightly.

“No idea.” Tony shrugged.

“…did you make them?” Sam asked, abruptly. “I mean, not that I’m saying you’d make homicidal robots or anything, it’s just… you know, that you’re sort of famous for making things like, you know, _robots_ , and maybe they’re after you cause it’s some kind of… seeking out their mother thing?”

“Well, _that_ sounds slightly twisted.” He rolled his eyes. “But I can see why you’re saying it.”

“So… are you the mother?”

Tony groaned, and swatted at the other’s shoulder. “I’m _not_ the mother. So they want your grandfather’s glasses. I think it’s because your grandfather found the ice man.”

“What the hell is the ice man?”

“Well, did you ever hear stories about what made him go insane?” He asked, casually. “Because I’m pretty sure it’s because of that. The thing that drove him insane – or obsessed – was this massive skeleton man he found trapped in the ice in the arctic, right? That’s how the stories go.”

“Yeah, that’s what the stories say, anyway.” Sam nodded, looking remarkably serious, for a teenaged boy, twisting in his seat so that he faced Tony, tugging one of his legs up and sort of tucking it under himself.

“I think it was one of those robots.”

“…you think my granddad found a robot man in the arctic?” He gaped at him.

“Yeah, actually.” Tony nodded. “And I think maybe he saw something… not sure _what_ , or how, but I think he _saw_ something, and now they think they need the glasses. Maybe… I mean, they say he went _blind_ , right? So maybe whatever he saw that made him go blind, they want his glasses. Where _are_ the glasses?”

“Ah… at my place, but…”

The car skidded to the side again, and Tony was thrown backwards against the driver’s door, Sam collapsing on top of him, like an awkward sprawl. _This isn’t what it looks like_! He wanted to yelp, but then the car skidded again, and he grabbed Sam’s hips, holding him firmly in place with hands and thighs to try and keep them from skidding right off the seat onto the floor of the car. “Hold on!”

“Holding!” Sam yelped, eyes wide.

“Yeah, okay, good, keep _hold –_ “ The driver’s door abruptly swung open behind Tony, and the front seat completely flipped upwards, sending them both sliding right out of the seat and onto the dirt in a tangle of limbs and bodies and the car seemed to change and twist and shift, and suddenly instead of a shitty looking Camaro, there was a sleek looking bright yellow robot that was raising its arms to protect the two squishy humans that had moments before been its passengers from the snarling cop car robot that had leapt forward to strike them.

“Holy shit!” The teen yowled.

Tony couldn’t really blame him. Scrambling to his feet, he caught Sam’s arms, and hauled him up with him. “ _Run_!”

Sam, wisely, didn’t argue.

Together, the two of them started running, but there was something coming, some _little_ robot that Tony was pretty sure had been broken off of the cop car, faster than the other simply because it was smaller. “Fuck off!” Tony grabbed the thing, when it grabbed at Sam’s shoulders, and threw it with all of his strength. It bounced a few metres away, but kept _coming_.

“Stop trying to save me, and save yourself!” Sam yelped, grabbing Tony’s arm, and hauling him along with him. Of course, then Sam dropped straight down to the ground, howling in shock, and rolled onto his back, kicking almost frantically at the thing that had a death grip on the cuff of his jeans. Shrieking in a way that was not entirely manly, Sam kicked at the face of the robot, which seemed so intent on getting at him, it was actually jerking his pants right off of him. Which, in another scenario, Tony would have laughed his ass off at someone else being pantsed by a robot, but at the moment, things seemed a little more life or death. “Oh god!”

So Tony did the only thing he could think of, which was probably not a good idea, actually.

“Get your head down, Sam!”

He twisted the casing of the arc reactor again, relieved beyond anything that he’d worked this failsafe into the arc reactor when he’d first built the thing back in that cave, and fired a blast of pent up energy at the robot.

Which then proceeded to explode into very small robotty pieces.

“Holy _shit_!” Sam howled, then twisted to gape up at Tony, who panted as he stood there, t-shirt bunched and tugged up to just below his armpits, arc reactor exposed as he twisted the casing back in place.

“Sorry,” he panted, and tugged the shirt down.

“What the _hell_ was that?!”

“…robot killing device that I happened to have built into my chest?” He cleared his throat. “I mean… it works for that, anyway, so… that’s what we’ll go with. So… you all right?”

“I’m in my underwear.”

“…that doesn’t actually answer my question.” Tony shook his head, but stepped forward to offer Sam his hand, and tugged the teenager up to his feet. “You don’t happen to hear death match going on, anymore, do you?”

“No,” he said, after a long, quiet moment.

“Let’s hope the right car won.” He murmured, and not letting go of Sam’s hand, he headed towards the ridge they’d tumbled down in their desperate scramble to get away from the little robot.

The lights from the factory, behind them, were broken by movement. Shafts of light streamed past the silhouette of the machine that walked forward, towards them, and for a moment, they were unable to see which of the two it was. But then a moment later, the lights shifted enough for them to be able to see that the body panels – because this robot clearly _was_ one that had changed from the car, and all of the car parts were still _there_ , just repurposed – were a bright, cheerful yellow.

“The right car won.” Tony breathed, as the robot set its hands on its hips, looking down at them with a confident looking expression.

“Those are… huh. That is… it’s an _incredible_ robot. Like… seriously advanced. Are you _sure_ you didn’t make it?”

Tony snorted.

The robot stepped closer, calm and sort of confident, hands on its hips.

“Hey!” Tony called, stepping closer. “Do you speak English? The other ones I’ve talked to just speak that robot language of yours… do you understand us?”

Instead of speaking in that same strange singing dialect that the red-eyed robot in Afghanistan had used, this one with its bright blue eyes in a face that didn’t look nearly as terrifying or evil, let out a sound that sounded a bit like someone was scanning through radio stations. “ _XM Satellite Radio – Digital cable brings you – Columbia Broadcasting System – “_

“Woah.” Sam breathed, looking impressed, moving closer to the robot. Tony might have suggested that the prudent course of action would be to _not_ get really close to a robot that had the ability to crush them in one hand, but on the other hand, it _had_ saved their lives. “So you – you talk through the radio?”

The radio feed switched again, and the car started _clapping_ – the fucking robot was standing there _clapping_ at them as it played the end of some speech: “ _Thank you, you’re beautiful. You’re wonderful, you’re wonderful_.”

“We’re going to be talked to in _pop culture_.” Tony blinked at the robot. “…awesome.”

“Wait, so why did you leave my house last night?” Sam demanded, shifting forward, pushing past Tony to get closer to the robot. “Why did you bust out of my place and run off into the middle of nowhere? What were you doing?!”

The car played a clip from a television show that Tony had sort of lived and breathed for a large chunk of his teenaged years, but then kept switching, so fast that Tony really had to admit that he seriously admired the databanks this robot was running with. “ _Message from Starfleet, Captain_ \- _throughout the inanimate vastness of space – Angels will rain down like visitors from heaven! Hallelujah_!”

Tony understood what he meant before it was even finished being said. He took a half step back, then breathed, “Of course. Of _course_. Organic robotic life… there’s no one on this planet smart enough to make that.”

Sam twisted to gape at Tony. “Are you saying _aliens_ made them?”

“No. _No_.” He laughed, looking up at the massive yellow and black robot in awe. “No… I’m saying he _is_ the alien.”

 

\---

 

Tony sat in the front passenger seat of the piece of shit Camaro, watching the steering wheel as it moved, seemingly on its own. It wasn’t, exactly, on its own, because of course the car was actually a robot, but in his mind, the car and the robot almost seemed like different things, as though they were different entities. He was sure, with time, that he would come to think of them as one and the same, but at the moment, his brain still went “this is a car, and that is a robot”.

Sam was crunched very tightly into the space between the front passenger seat and the driver’s seat, which wasn’t really room for a child, much less a full sized adult young man. The teenager’s eyes were on the steering wheel too, as they rode in silence, watching the car drive itself.

“You comfortable?” Tony said, abruptly.

“Ah… yeah, comfortable.” Sam cleared his throat, and nodded.

“Sure you are,” he frowned, looking the other up and down. “…you know, there’s a whole wide driver’s seat there you could sit in.”

“But he’s driving!” He waved at the steering wheel.

“Good point.” Tony shrugged, smirking. “Well, try to stop shoving your elbow into my kidneys, huh?”

Sam squeaked, flushed.

Smiling faintly, he closed his eyes as he leaned back in the seat, and murmured, “So where do you think we’re going, exactly?”

“No idea,” Sam admitted. “Though the car said that there were angels from heaven, right, so… probably we’re going to meet more robots?”

“Mm. I hope they don’t have red eyes.”

“…huh?”

Tony grinned at him. “There are different kinds of robots, Sam. Red eyes are bad, blue eyes, so far, are good.”

“…really?” Sam frowned slightly as he considered that.

“So far. I’m not an exact expert, but I tend to know enough about following patterns, so… yeah. Two different kinds of robots. Maybe it’s a robot war, or something? After all, those two seemed pretty willing to go after it. And they _are_ pretty damn advanced… I mean, aside from the fact that this robot here turns into a piece of shit car when it’s not a robot.”

Abruptly, the Camaro skidded to a halt, and the passenger door swung open before the bench seat tipped them out the same way that it had at the warehouse.

Tony yelped, in shock, and sort of rolled onto the shoulder of the road, startled. Sam tumbled right on top of him, again, and yelped in horror as the bright yellow Camaro drove off down the road, leaving them standing there on the side of the road like idiots. “You can’t say something like that!” Sam wailed. “He’s sensitive! You can’t hurt his feelings like that, we _need_ him, because – “

And then Sam trailed off, jaw dropping.

The yellow Camaro that pulled up beside them wasn’t rusty and beat up and vintage anymore. It was new and sleek and _smooth_ , perfect yellow paint with two smooth black lines running up the hood, the roof, down the trunk…

And the passenger door swung open for them again.

“Damn.” Sam breathed, eyes wide.

“I’m gonna go with _this_ is a much better car for a teenaged boy to be driving around in?” Tony grinned, and slid into the front passenger seat, then held out his hands to Sam. “Coming?”

The other hesitated, licking his lips for a moment, then grabbed Tony’s hands and scrambled into the car.

The car door slammed shut before either of them were really prepared for it, and they sat in silence for a few long moments before Tony finally said, “Not that I’m complaining or anything, but you are aware of the fact that your face is basically pressing on my crotch, right?”

Sam yelped, and scrambled to sit up properly, though _that_ resulted in Tony letting out a yelp of pain when he managed to crunch his knee in very nearly the same spot his face had been a moment before, then tripped over Tony’s arm and ended up sprawled across the front seats, which were now bucket seats instead of the bench seat it had been before. Not as easy for sprawling out on. Finally, Sam scrambled to sit up on the space between the two seats, spine ramrod straight as he panted, eyes wide. “…my face was pressed into your _thigh_. Not your crotch. Thigh.”

“Mmhmm.” Tony slumped back in his seat, laughing slightly. “Sure.”

“Shut up.” Sam grumbled, flushed.

“You’re seriously going to sit on the centre console and watch the gear shift move around between your knees?” He arched a brow, smirking slightly.

“…shut up.”

“No really, you’re going to sit there with a gear shift thumping into your thighs every time the car decides to go a different gear, instead of sitting in one of the two actual _seats_?” Tony laughed, leaning back in his bucket seat, relaxed. Go figure, the whole world is apparently going to hell by being invaded by aliens, and he just couldn’t feel like it was all that serious right now, because his teenaged companion was absolutely… moronic.

“You’re sitting in one, and he’s driving!”

“And?”

Sam narrowed his eyes at Tony, clearly suspicious, and said, “I’m not going to sit in his seat, because he’s _driving_. What, you want me to sit in your lap? Tell Santa what I want for Christmas?”

“Oi. You’re a few too years old to pull the Christmas routine.” Tony arched a brow. “But you could sit there if you wanted, and we could talk about whatever pops up.”

There was a moment of silence, then Sam held up a single hand. “…did you just… did you just say ‘we could talk about whatever pops up’?!”

“I might have?” Tony shrugged.

“That is – that is worse than the lines _I_ use.”

“And do your lines work?”

“…no.” Sam admitted.

“And did _mine_ work?” Tony asked, with a confident little drawl.

There was another of those moments of silence, then abruptly Sam slid over into Tony’s seat, and settled sideways across his lap, so that his feet rested in the driver’s seat, and his back rested against the passenger side door. “Yeah. I guess it did.”

 

\---

 

“That… is a lot of robots.”

Sam blinked as he looked up at Tony, startled. “Yeah. That’s a lot of robots.”

Several, in fact, including the Camaro, a firetruck, a jeep, a sleek little silver sports car, and a _massive_ transport truck. Of course, they weren’t really cars, they just apparently managed to shape shift from cars into robots, but without _names_ , it was sort of hard for Tony to think of them as anything but, well, what _car_ they had been, before they became enormous robots.

Tony let his hand rest on Sam’s shoulder, and squeezed tightly, trying to comfort him. It probably didn’t help all that much, but at least he was trying?

The one that looked like a transport truck, massive, blue and red, crouched in front of them, and neither of them were really able to help it, they had to take a half step back. It just sort of felt like they were about to be stepped on. But there the massive robot bent, and leaned close to them. Its face _moved_ , when it talked, Tony was startled to realize. There were small pieces on its face that shifted and moved and fuck it even had _eyebrows_ , which actually made things a little easier, he realized, because it sort of made it have proper expressions. Now _that_ took skill. He had yet to see a robot that achieved facial expressions quite so naturally before, and _this_ one managed it. Dammit, alien robots _were_ more advanced. Its voice was gravelly, like he could hear the gears inside of it that formed its voice working. Only it’s attention was on Sam, not Tony, so he took another half step back and let Sam take the lead here. “Are you Samuel James Witwicky?” The robot growled. “Descendent of Archibald Witwicky?”

Sam licked his lips, then half nodded, jerkily. “Yeah?”

The robot nodded. “My name is Optimus Prime. We are autonomous robotic organisms from the planet Cybertron.”

“I _knew_ it,” Tony breathed, and he couldn’t stop _grinning_.

The one that used to be a fire truck spoke up. “But you can call us Autobots. For short.”

“This looks like a cool place to kick it,” the little silver sports car one said, twisting his lower body in a strange sort of way that made him think of a kid doing some kind of hip hop dancing, and flopped onto the carcass of a car that had been long abandoned in this lot they’d ended up in. He flopped, sort of lazily, on the car, with a grin, and nodded.

“This is my first lieutenant, designation Jazz.”

First lieutenant. So they were military.

“What’s cracking, little bitches?” Jazz grinned, as he leaned back on the car, arms crossed behind his back.

Tony bit his lower lip to keep from laughing _too_ loud at the sheer ridiculousness of a robotic car talking like he was a gangster in a rap video. “Where, _exactly_ , did you learn to speak English?”

“We learned your Earth languages from the world wide web,” Optimus Prime said, standing up as he did, that voice of his seeming to roll around them, rumbling in their chests. Of course they learned to talk from the internet. Frankly, they were lucky Jazz wasn’t asking for ‘I can has cheeseburger please’ or ‘ermaghad, gerseberps’ or denying everything with a ‘nope, Chuck Testa!’. “My weapons specialist, Ironhide,” Optimus gestured to the jeep, who proceeded to swing weapons out of who fucking knew where.

“You feeling… _lucky_ , punk?” Ironhide growled.

Their voices all sounded similar, come to think of it, Tony realized, and he sort of wondered if that was because of the fact that they were all robots that came from the same planet and it was sort of a dialect thing, or if it was just because they were _robots_ , and all of their voices therefore basically used the same technology to work. He figured that was possible. After all, human voices all sounded different because of variation in the tightness and length of vocal cords and in the way that the speaker pulled air through them. But if robots were _constructed_ , then technically wouldn’t they all be built using the same technology?

…and hey, why did the Camaro talk with the radio, then?

Tony wasn’t terribly intimidated by the display of weapons, but he sort of wanted to investigate how they worked. Based on the way Sam swallowed hard, he figured Sam was a little more intimidated. Oh hey, turns out he only noticed that because he only still had his hand on Sam’s shoulder. Whoops.

“ _Ironhide_.” Optimus said, lowly, and damn if that didn’t sound like a warning father trying to keep his child from embarrassing the whole family.

“I was just kidding,” Ironhide grumbled, softly, and Tony could have laughed out loud. He _did_ sound like a petulant teenager. “I just wanted to show off my pipes…”

The leader – because clearly Optimus Prime _was_ the leader, and not just because his name was Prime – straightened up, as though taking a deep breath, and nodded at the fire truck. “My medical officer, Rachett.”

…robots needed _medical staff_? Oh, well… he supposed that would be more accurately described as a repair crew, wouldn’t it? Tony looked up at this Rachett, intrigued. He might be a good ‘person’ to ask about some of his questions in regards to how, exactly, these robots worked, because he wanted to know everything, he wanted to know everything about what made them _tick_ , and he really wanted to know about their power sources. They had to be similar to his arc reactor, because they registered on the same gamma wavelength that his arc reactor did, but were they really arc reactors like his? This Rachett might be the one to ask. Rachett, who was somehow _sniffing at the air_. That seemed strange. They were robots, how could they smell? Unless they had human like movements that didn’t actually register to human activities, and maybe he was actually using that as a measuring technique?

And apparently it _was_ some kind of measuring technique, because a moment later, he said, “The juvenile’s pheromone levels indicates that he wishes to _mate_ with the elder human.”

Sam squeaked.

An honest to god _squeak_.

Tony grinned, absolutely _not_ freaked out or shy about this. He had the advantage of years and the knowledge that everyone wanted him, dammit, and hooked his thumbs in his pockets, shifting so that he faced Sam better. “Mating, huh?”

“Shut up, he’s a robot, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” Sam muttered, flushed bright red.

“Rawr,” he drawled, grinning at him.

“You’re… you’re an asshole,” he grumbled, crossing his arms self-consciously, trying to look less out of his depths and not really succeeding, he sort of looked _more_ awkward by doing it, actually.

“An asshole you want to _mate_ ,” Tony reminded him, with a devious grin.

“Shut up, or you’ll _never_ get the chance,” Sam growled through grit teeth, flushed.

“Sure thing.” He smirked.

Arms still crossed, Sam quite pointedly refused to look at him. Tony didn’t care if he looked, at the moment, Rachett had already told him what _he_ needed to know. Well, everything he needed to know in regards to Sam at that moment, because there were about eight million _other_ questions he wanted to ask him, but… either way. Heh, even three months in a cave on an all but starvation diet with a thing shoved in his chest, he still raked them in. Yeah, Tony knew he was hot.

Well, for a kid, Sam wasn’t exactly hard on the eyes, either.

Perhaps a touch _young_ considering they were in California and he had to be eighteen to be legal, but…

Optimus Prime was continuing on, though. “You already know your guardian, Bumblebee.”

The Camaro started _dancing_ , which was sort of adorable and hilarious all at once, the radio flicking on as he played a part of a song, naturally, “ _Check on the rep, yep, second to none.”_

That seemed to perk Sam out of his funk. “So you’re my guardian, huh?”

Bumblebee nodded at him.

Yeah, Tony decided. Definitely adorable.

…were robots supposed to be adorable? Probably not, but he was cheerful and perky and yellow, and if he was going to figure that they could ever make a robot for children, Tony sort of figured it would look like Bumblebee. Well, perhaps a touch _smaller_ than Bumblebee, as he could probably still pick either of them up in one hand, but… still.

Rachett frowned at Bumblebee. Apparently robots could frown, too. “His vocal processors were damaged in battle. I’m still working on them.”

“Well, that explains why he talks with the radio,” Tony said, hands on his hips.

There was a moment of silence, then the ground seemed to shift below them, slightly, as Optimus Prime crouched again. Introductions were over, but it was as though the massive leader realized that there was still one person in their midst who _hadn’t_ actually been introduced. He moved his massive face closer to the two humans again, mere inches away from them, and said, lowly, “Are you Anthony Howard Stark, descendent of Howard Stark?”

“Just Tony. But yeah. That would be me.”

“I am pleased you found each other.” Optimus leaned back, slightly, then said, quite seriously, “We were afraid that we would have to track you down. I would advise that you stay together as much as possible, so that we do not have to split our efforts to keep you both safe.”

Tony smirked, and nudged Sam’s arm. “Well, that’s perfect for the man that wants to mate me.”

“Shut _up_.” He groaned.

Shaking his head, Tony set his hands on his hips, then looked up – and up – at Optimus Prime, and asked the question that had been bothering him since a helicopter turned into a robot and tried to grab him in the Afghanistan desert three months ago. “Why are you _here_?”

Optimus Prime looked somber. “We are here looking for the All Spark. And we must find it before Megatron.”

“All Spark?” Tony said, at the same moment that Sam asked, “Mega-what?”

What happened next was _totally_ cool. That was it, Tony was stealing it. He was _totally_ stealing it. It was like the perfect marriage of his own technology and some kind of alien technology, and it was gorgeous. Optimus Prime touched two of his metallic fingers to his temple, and a flicker of blue holograms flicked out from his eyes, spreading across the pavement. It seemed more _real_ than most of the holograms he’d ever seen, but he could totally do something like that, if he ever tried. He was good enough to do it. The holograms spread across the ground around them, and it was as though the ground itself split and cracked, and fire and lava shone through the cracks. Tony actually took a step back, biting his lip, and he _knew_ it was just an illusion, but it looked so real that even he slipped for a moment.

“Our planet was once a powerful empire,” Optimus Prime explained, and Tony realized that they were _seeing_ that planet, holographically projected around them. “Peaceful, and just, until we were betrayed by Megatron, the leader of the Decepticons.”

“Well, that’s just a case of bad naming, there,” Tony murmured, and twisted to look as a massive holographic robot reared up behind them, looking evil as anything, red eyes glaring out over the whole of this now burning planet. “You call something as evil sounding as the Decepticons, and they’re gonna be evil. I don’t care if they’re a society devoted to saving kittens and making cupcakes, they are gonna do it _evil_ if they are named something like ‘Decepticons’.”

“All who defied them were destroyed,” Optimus said, and he sounded honestly saddened by this. “Our war finally consumed our planet, and the All Spark was lost to the stars. Megatron followed it to earth, where Captain Witwicky found him.”

The illusion faded, around them, leaving them standing on the road again, feeling sort of vulnerable.

“My grandfather,” Sam breathed, blinking.

“It was an accident that intertwined our fates. Megatron crash landed before he could retrieve the Cube. Captain Witwicky accidentally triggered Megatron’s navigation system. The coordinates to the Cube’s location on Earth were imprinted on the captain’s glasses.” Optimus explained, sounding sorry.

“That’s why they want them,” Tony breathed.

“How’d you know about his glasses?” Sam blinked up at Optimus Prime, confused.

“eBay.”

“…eBay.” Sam murmured, looking at Tony with a ‘well, that explains everything, doesn’t it?’ sort of expression.

“If the Decepticons find the All Spark,” Rachett spoke up, “They will use its power to transform Earth’s machines and build a new army.”

“That sounds bad.” Tony crossed his arms. “Especially if they get a hand on mine.”

“They will use _all_ of Earth’s machines.” Ironhide rumbled.

“Then that would be bad,” he said again. “Very, very, _very_ bad.”

“They will extinguish the human race.” Optimus said, as though he actually cared. Did he care? He was a giant robot from space. Why would he care about the puny human race. Still, nice sentiment. “Sam Witwicky. You hold the key to Earth’s survival.”

He squeaked again.

Tony reached up to grip Sam’s shoulder again, squeezing gently. Sam whimpered, but leaned a little into the older man anyway, clearly seeking comfort. He couldn’t blame him. “Okay,” Tony said, “So he’s got the glasses that are going to save the world. Why the hell am I here? Why do they want me?”

The leader of the robots turned his face towards him, and lowered his face for a moment. Oh, that didn’t look encouraging.

“Howard Stark was the lead scientist of Sector Seven and the Ice Man project. He knew all that humans could ever hope to know about us, about the Autobots, and the Decepticons. To us, you are valuable only in that we need to save you. To the Decepticons, you are a storehouse of knowledge that they intend to extract from you.”

Tony’s eyes widened. “I know… _nothing_ about my father’s work.”

“That may be so, but they do not think so. The Decepticons will stop at nothing to have you in their grasp.”

“Well. Awesome. They want me because my father was an asshole. Sam… we need you to save the world.” Tony swallowed, and turned to face the younger man. “Please tell me you know where the glasses are?”

 

\---

 

Tony was in charge. Awesome.

See, if he was _actually_ in charge of something, that would be one thing. But he was standing in a narrow alley outside of a fairly nice little suburban neighborhood, leaning on the side panel of Bumblebee’s engine, arms crossed. Sam was inside the house – or he was supposed to be, he was fairly sure he could just see him through the hedges, talking rapidly to his father – getting the glasses, and Tony, apparently, was supposed to be keeping an eye on the Autobots. He didn’t know why. They were _cars_. They kind of blended in by default of what they _were_.

Bumblebee’s radio crackled on, and Elvis crooned for him: “ _Tell me, are you lonesome tonight_?”

Tony snorted. “What, you think I miss Sam?”

The radio didn’t respond, but Bumblebee’s whole frame shuddered slightly, which sort of answered that question.

Snickering, Tony slapped the car’s hood, and said, “Of course not, he’s been gone all of two minutes. And I’ve got you here, aren’t you company enough for me? I figure you’re good company, though your buddies are a little weird… but, yeah. I’m having fun, hanging out with my space alien friends.”

The radio crackled again. “ _Am I beast, or am I human, am I just like you_?”

“You’re just like us.” He smirked. “Only a little more metallic.”

There was a whirring of servos and electronics and metal parts, and Optimus Prime fucking _stood up_.

“Hey!” Tony shoved off of Bumblebee’s bumper, waving up at the robot. “What the hell are you doing? Humans aren’t used to seeing robots in their suburbs! We’re supposed to be _laying low_ , remember?! Get back into a truck!”

Only then Bumblebee was transforming too, now that Tony wasn’t leaning on him, and he threw up his hands. “What are you _doing_?!”

“ _No, I’m not sorry_ ,” the radio crackled, as Optimus started stepping delicately over the massive hedges – into the yard of the Witwicky house, what the fuck was he _doing_ – and Bumblebee shrugged at Tony before darting into the yard, after him.

“The rest of you!” Tony pointed at the other bots. “ _Stay here_.”

And then he broke into a run, darting between Optimus Prime’s legs as he dashed into the yard, over the lawn, and onto the porch beside Bumblebee, slapping what was evidently his upper arm now. “Seriously, do you guys have an _allergy_ to listening to me?!” He hissed. “Sam is _right_ there! His _father_ is right there!”

His father, that Sam was apparently trying desperately to keep from coming outside.

“God, can he pour on the compliments _any_ more obviously?” Tony rolled his eyes. That was… _not_ believable. Of course, Bumblebee was trying to silently communicate with Optimus Prime with waving hands and vague hand symbols that robot fingers were not really meant to make, and despite Tony’s best attempts to tug his arms back down and get him to go _back to the street_ , Bumblebee seemed bound and determined to ignore him.

And then Sam was darting out onto the lawn. “What are you _doing_?!”

“Sam!” Tony yelped, following him. “No, don’t, he’s gonna back up – the – the – oh… I hope that fountain wasn’t important…”

Optimus looked down at the crumbled remains of the fountain. “My bad.”

“My bad. Wow.” He groaned, running his hands through his hair as he hurried between the massive robot’s legs to grab Sam’s arm. “Look, they’re not listening to us, apparently, so my suggestion is… get inside as fast as possible, find the glasses, send them on their merry way, and you can get back to a… semblance of a normal life. Or I’ll take you on a tour of Stark Towers, or something. Either way. C’mon. Let’s just go get those glasses.”

Sam took a deep breath, then pointed at them. “Control them.”

“Oh yeah,” Tony rolled his eyes, and grimaced. “I’ll _totally_ control them. They’re bigger and badder and more metal than I am. They would crush me into tiny squishy bits. But oh yeah, I’ll _totally_ control them. Yeah, I’ll get right on that.”

“Control them, and I’ll take you up on that damn tour of the Stark Tower.” Sam jabbed his finger in Tony’s chest, then made a face of pain. “Ow. _Ow_ , the metal thing in your chest is hard.”

“Well, it’s _metal_.” He rolled his eyes, and pushed at Sam. “ _Go_. Hurry up, or we’ll have to skip all the labs and skip straight to the tour of the bedroom.”

The teenager gaped at him for a long moment.

“Okay, seriously, someone flirts with you, and you shut down?” Tony rolled his eyes again, and shoved him. “ _Go_!”

Sam jumped, then scrambled into the house, clearly in a hurry.

He snickered, then headed over to where Bumblebee was investigating the space under a wooden trellis, peering into the living room. “Bee!” He hissed.

Bumblebee jerked up, startled, and went straight through the trellis, which tumbled around him in pieces.

Tony groaned. “…oh, Bumblebee.”

“Tony Stark.” Optimus rumbled, and he looked up, sharply.

“…hey.”

“Time is short. You must help Sam find the glasses.” And Optimus was holding his hands out to him, looking terribly serious.

Tony took a deep breath, then rolled his eyes, and stepped up into the robot’s hands, grabbing a hold of his thumb as he twisted so that he could sit. He felt a little bit safer sitting, than he did, standing. Optimus lifted him up to one of the windows, pushing the wooden windows aside with the fingertips of his other hand, and gently touched his fingertips to the windowsill.

“What – what are you _doing_?!” Sam yelped, gaping at them.

“They want the glasses,” Tony shifted forward. “I’m here to help you find them.”

“Right.” He held out his hands, which Tony had no shame in taking, to let Sam tug him into the room. The room was… well, it was sort of what he expected, for a teenaged boy in the suburbs, only a little bit more interesting. There were posters, and a basketball net, but also several metal racks with electronics in various states of repair and disrepair, a two monitors set up on the computer, an unmade bed, laundry tossed in the corners… no surprises there, really.

“Okay, so what are we looking for? They in a case?”

“Yeah, a… they’re in a case, metal case… I can’t _find_ them…” Sam was tossing clothes in the air as he searched under everything, freaking out.

“Well… _think_ , Sam! Were they… inside a backpack or something?”

“Yes!” He spun to look at Tony, pointing at him. “In my backpack, they were in my backpack! Where is my backpack? Oh god… where is my backpack?”

“Okay. Breathe.” Tony held his hands up, seriously. “Where do you want me to look?”

“Ah… try…” Sam hesitated, biting his lip, then waved to the left, over by the computers. “Look there. Look through this section. Look for my backpack, that whole… area.”

Logically, a backpack would probably be on a desk, or on the floor, or maybe tossed under a desk, Tony figured, so he crouched down, digging underneath the desk, figuring that would be the most logical place for it. Sifting through some papers, he grabbed the massive black box underneath, which would definitely be large enough to toss a backpack into for a teenaged boy who didn’t want his parents snooping in it.

“Oh god, only not in there, that’s my _private_ … place.” Sam darted back.

“Oh no.” Tony jerked the box out of the boy’s reach. “I’m checking the box, Sam. You might have shoved your backpack in here after your very serious, very important business that you had to conduct with it.”

“But it’s my treasure chest!” He yelped, then realized what that sounded like, and flushed bright red. “I mean… it’s – just… give it here.”

“Checking for the baaaag,” Tony sang, cheerfully.

Flipping the lid off, he snickered. It wasn’t even that bad. Some copies of hand-me-down magazines that had been a little worn at the edges, a couple dvds that looked like the sort someone had gotten from a friend, a box of condoms that didn’t really look like they’d ever been opened – probably bought for some wishful thinking – and a tube of lube that certainly _had_ been opened and then nearly completely used, and a small vibrator. It wasn’t even an impressive vibrator, it was just one of those cheap novelty ones that you could buy at any sort of shop, not even an actual ‘sex shop’. Nothing that Tony figured a person had to freak out about. It was all _innocent_. He’d been half expecting he’d see a monster dildo or something.

“Nope, no bag here,” he said, with a grin, and handed the black box over to the teenager, who scrambled to shove it under his mattress. Not under the bed, under the _mattress_ , which didn’t actually lay back down, then, it just sort of lay on top of it, like an extreme version of the pea.

“That was… invasion of privacy.” Sam spluttered.

“That was ‘me trying to find your bag so the giant robots will stop pestering us about where the glasses have gone’,” Tony said, calmly, and kept digging. “Are you sure it’s in this room? Because I’ve found a lot of very interesting things, but I haven’t found a backpack yet…”

“It’s gotta be – oh holy _shit_!”

Tony didn’t actually know what had happened outside, but he was pretty sure he could figure out that it had _something_ to do with the Autobots that were currently hanging out in Sam’s backyard. The whole house shook, and there was an explosion outside, sparks flying everywhere through the night sky before the hydro completely went out. There was another crash, then the shattering of glass, then silence again.

“Oh… no…” Sam panted.

“…I think your neighborhood is going to the dogs.” Tony said. “With a _lot_ of help from a very helpful group of robots.”

“Oh god,” he keened, gripping his head as Sam turned around in a helpless circle, as though trying to find some direction. “Oh _god_ my parents are going to kill me…”

There was movement at the window again, and Optimus tapped against the glass with his fingertips, those metal robot brows furrowed. “I apologize. There was an incident at the end of the garden… Rachett found the electrical wires.”

“Oh, the electrical wires.” Sam bent double, head hanging between his knees as he tried not to hyperventilate.

“Have you found the glasses?” Optimus Prime rumbled.

“It’s a _little_ hard to find the glasses in the dark.” Tony pointed out, holding out his hands. Of course, there was a dull blue glow coming from the centre of his chest, which sort of belied the statement about the dark, but the flashlight in his chest only worked for him, really, not Sam too. Besides, he was pretty sure the Autobots weren’t actually aware of that little _feature_ he had. “So yeah, we haven’t found them, yet.”

The robot’s eyes lit up, sort of like they had when he was casting holograms, blue light pouring into the room and casting everything into sharp blue and black contrast.

“Well… that works.” He shrugged, and slapped Sam’s shoulder. “C’mon. Let’s keep looking.”

Sam nodded, and started searching again.

As Tony dug through a pile of dirty laundry, trying to find the bag, he heard a call from outside the door.

“Sam?”

“Sammy?”

“Oh god.” Sam’s head snapped up.

“…parents?” Tony guessed.

“Parents,” he confirmed, and scrambled to his feet, running to the door, and flicking the lock desperately. Panting, he suddenly seemed to remember that Tony was there, and waved at him, hissing, “ _Hide_!”

“Right,” he ducked behind one of the shelves, then bolted up again to hiss at Optimus. “Lights! Off!”

The leader of the Autobots nodded, quickly, and ducked down out of sight.

“Sam? Are you in there? Why is the door locked? You know the rule! No doors locked in my house!” A man – that logically had to be Sam’s father – called from outside the door, knocking firmly on it.

Tony snickered. “Even _I_ was allowed to lock my door.”

“Shut up!” He hissed, flushed, and scrambled to shove things out of the way, then yelped when his parents, outside the door, continued to talk, apparently feeling no compulsion to listen to their son, threatening to take the hinges off the door if he didn’t just open it. Oh yeah, Tony could see that _this_ was going beautifully. His father was _counting_ now, and Tony snickered as he hid himself better behind one of the shelves, then watched through a crack between the shelves of books when Sam unlocked the door, then darted outside, panting. “…hey. Hey. What’s up. What’s with the bat?”

His parents were asking what the sound was, who Sam had been talking to, but those, as far as Tony was concerned, were perfectly valid questions. Hell, he’d been hiding behind shelves more than a few times in his life as someone asked the person he’d been with those types of questions.

Usually, he was naked at the time.

At least today he was wearing clothes, Tony smirked, and listened.

And _then_ the door was being pushed open, and his parents were waltzing right into the room. Tony swallowed, and shifted back a little on his knees, tucking himself a little better into a darker corner. Sam was desperately trying to keep them out, trying to talk his way out of it, trying to get them to believe him well enough to leave, but Tony had heard people ramble like Sam was rambling right now many times before. Typically, that sort of rambling didn’t convince people to think that everything was fine and that nothing was going on. _That_ sort of rambling usually convinced people that you were trying to hide something.

Heh. Well, Sam _was_ trying to hide something.

“Oh, you’re so _defensive_!” His mother threw up her hands, shaking her head. “Were you – were you _masturbating_?”

The two Witwicky men, that had been trying to talk over each other a moment before, both stopped speaking immediately, gaping at her in horror.

Tony had to press his hand over his mouth to keep from bursting into laughter.

“ _No_ , mom, why – why would you even _ask_ that – no! I don’t _mastur_ – I don’t do that!” Sam spluttered, at about the same moment that his father was protesting, “Judy, you do not _ask_ those sorts of questions, that is a private – a father son thing to talk about, it is _not_ for mothers to ask about!”

He was _really_ struggling to not laugh, now.

“I mean, you don’t have to call it that _word_ if it makes you uncomfortable,” Judy just kept digging the grave a little deeper. “You can call it… Sam’s Happy Time, or… My Special Alone Time, or…”

“ _Mom_!” Sam wailed.

Pressing his forehead against the floor, Tony’s shoulders shook as he fought to keep his laughter contained, helplessly.

There was another rumble outside, which was probably the Autobots trying to find a hiding spot as Sam’s father tried to investigate the source of the light they’d seen – which yes, definitely _had_ been Optimus’ eye beams – and Tony sort of just wondered why the hell they didn’t just turn themselves back into cars. Cars were a pretty good disguise, right? But it flicked the _lights_ back on, this latest rumble, so that was encouraging, at least.

“Come on, Sam,” Judy Witwicky was saying. “We heard you talking to someone! We want to know who it was!”

Well, someone had to do _something_.

Tony pushed the chair he’d been half hidden behind away, and stood, casually. As though, you know, it was every day that a middle aged billionaire genius hung out in teenaged boy’s bedrooms, about as dirty and sweaty as the boy himself was. “Hey.”

The Witwickys spun to stare at him.

Sam gave him a horrified wide eyed look, and slashed his hand across his throat. What, Tony was supposed to take back the last thirty seconds and pretend he _hadn’t_ stood up?

His father’s expression changed, from shocked to angry and sort of offended, which Tony couldn’t exactly blame him for. After all, he was hanging out in this man’s little boy’s bedroom. He probably looked like some kind of Dateline predator or something. “And who the hell are _you_?!”

“ _Ron_!” Judy yelped. “That’s _Tony Stark_!”

He shrugged, and grinned casually at them. “Guilty as charged.”

“…Tony Stark.” Ron said, slowly.

“Dad, this is – this is _not_ what it looks like…” Sam groaned, humiliated as he scrambled towards Tony, grabbing his arm and trying to hustle him out of the room. Into the bathroom, actually. Oh yeah, Sam, great damage control, there.

“Oh, I think this is _exactly_ what it looks like,” Ron said, sort of dangerously.

“ _Ron_ , it’s _Tony Stark_.” Judy said, trying to force the words through her teeth while smiling at Tony like an idiot.

“Yeah, I heard you.”

“Dad, it is _not_ what it looks like!” Sam yelped.

Only Tony sort of figured that Judy _wanted_ it to be exactly what it looked like, based on her over-excited smile and slightly maniacal gleam to her eyes. He’d seen that ‘oh god yes please, this will be so good for us’ expression in parent’s eyes before, hopeful that their child had basically just made the _perfect_ social connection, and usually he tried to get as far away from it as he possibly could, to put as much distance between himself and the mothers of girls that dreamed of being Mrs. Tony Stark as possible.

Instead, he slung his arm around Sam’s shoulder, and tugged the teenager against his side. “Sorry. I should have introduced myself before hand, but Sam said he wanted to try and talk to you before I did.”

Ron’s eyes bugged out of his head.

Judy let out a high pitched squealing sound that actually sort of hurt his ears.

Sam whimpered, and clutched a little tighter to Tony. “Oh god,” he groaned, eyes falling shut.

Tony grinned, despite himself, and played the part of the doting older boyfriend that was really just trying to make his much younger boyfriend feel less awkward at the moment. If he did say so himself, anyway. “I really should have said something.”

“You sure as hell _should_ have!” Ron said, face slightly too red, eyes narrowed suspiciously.

“Ron!” Judy swatted at his shoulder again, and hissed, as though it was the answer to any argument they might have tried to have, “It’s _Tony Stark_!”

And yes, apparently that _was_ the answer to any argument here.

…awkward.

“Backpack,” Tony growled, quietly, in Sam’s ear.

“Right. _Right_!” He scrambled out of Tony’s grip and scrambled towards his mother, grabbing her arm. “My backpack! Have you seen my backpack, mom? I need it.”

“ _Backpack_?” She blinked.

“Backpack,” he said, again, firmly.

Tony glanced away from Sam to realize that Ron was looking straight at him, now, a bit of a steady and sharp laser leveled gaze, not wavering even slightly. Tony wasn’t even sure if it was an _angry_ expression, it sort of just looked like a very steady “I am watching you, buddy”. He arched a brow and gave the man a crooked grin, which apparently didn’t help, because Ron’s brows furrowed deeper. Awesome.

“Kitchen!” Sam yelped, suddenly, grabbing Tony’s hand and hauling him along behind him as he dashed downstairs.

“If you were trying to convince you parents that – that we _weren’t_ doing exactly what they think we were doing,” Tony pointed out, pushing off of a wall that he nearly crashed into, wide eyed as he followed the teenager that definitely didn’t seem like he wanted to let go of his death grip, “Then you are doing it entirely the wrong way, Sam.”

“My backpack’s in the kitchen,” he said, apparently not bothered by Tony’s protests, and tugged him along.

Tony rolled his eyes, and followed.

Scrambling into the kitchen, Sam finally let go of Tony’s hand, then, and grabbed the bag that was sitting on the floor at the end of the island, letting out a wordless shout of relief as he dug through it, then brandished a metal tube. “ _Glasses_!”

“Nicely done.” Tony grinned, and wasn’t even surprised when the other threw an arm around his shoulder in triumph and squeezed. “Now, let’s get them to the Autobots, huh, so they can save the world.”

And then the doorbell rang about seventy times by someone who apparently had a thing for doorbells.

Now, Tony wasn’t an expert on doorbells and people coming to them. Frankly, he didn’t even have one, he had JARVIS who told him when someone was trying to bust into his lab or his house, or something. But he knew the _feeling_ of someone trying to interfere with his private time to throw a monkey wrench into all of his plans, and that he knew was exactly what was going on. “Back door?” Tony breathed.

“Um. Yeah.” Sam nodded, and grabbed his hand again, hauling him back towards the back door.

“Sam Wickity!” Someone shouted from the front door. Really, was it so hard to find a route to the back door that _didn’t_ involve passing by the front door?

“ _Witwicky_.” Ron corrected.

Tony stepped forward to peer over Sam’s shoulder, brows furrowed. Seriously? There had to be five or six men in suits, looking like all sorts of official _government_ , harassing Sam’s parents. Their apparent leader had a grin as he stepped forward, looking like a kid in the candy store as he looked them up and down. “Sam, right? You’re Sam.”

“Uh… yeah.” Sam nodded.

Tony groaned slightly. “You _could_ lie.”

“We need you to come with us, son.” The man said, grinning.

“Woah, no way!” Ron said, displeased, shaking his head. “He is _not_ going anywhere with you!”

“I am asking politely. Sir.” The man said. “You do not want to see me asking if I’m not doing it politely. I am carrying a… loaded weapon.”

“You sound like you’ve walked out of a sixties spy movie.” Tony said, jaw grit as he stepped closer, not letting go of Sam’s hand. Okay, if the paparazzi caught this he was never going to live this down, walking around holding a teenager’s hand, but dammit, he was doing it so that he could He bolt at a moment’s notice and drag him with him. After all, in the last forty eight hours – son of a bitch, had he really been in Afghanistan _yesterday_? – he had been forced to learn to bolt at a moment’s notice. At the moment, he wasn’t going to leave the other person the robots were trying to kill behind.

And it wasn’t even because of Sam’s pheromone levels.

 _Mostly_ wasn’t because of Sam’s pheromone levels.

The agent narrowed his brows as he looked at Tony, then lifted his jaw, and said, slowly, “ _You_ … are Tony Stark.”

“Yeah.” Tony smirked, and nodded. “Tony Stark. So how about … you back off, before I call my extremely high paid lawyers. Not overpaid, just highly paid. They’re _very_ good at their jobs. So. Back off, get out of the Witwicky’s very nice home… put everything back where you got it from… and get the hell out before I make some phone calls.”

Only the man wasn’t paying attention to Tony’s very, _very_ valid threats.

He was talking to another of the men in suits, then stepped forward with a really rudimentary looking Geiger counter. Seriously? Starktech had a far sleeker and less bulky version of that very device, he’d made it years ago, why the hell was the government still using these clunky huge things from the nineties? He was going to have to have a word with some of the military liaisons that worked for him. Like Rhodey. Yes, he and Rhodey were going to have to have a good long chat about why the hell the government wasn’t yet using his Geiger counters. Really. But the man was scanning Sam with it, now, eyes widening as the beeping got louder and faster.

…oh shit.

Correction, that wasn’t a Geiger counter, that was a Gamma counter.

That was even worse.

“Hey now,” Tony stepped forward, shoving Sam behind him. There would be consequences for that later, he was absolutely sure of it, but at the moment, he had to make sure that Sam didn’t get dragged along by the government assholes. They had to _save the world_ , their schedule was a touch full. “Lawyers, remember?”

The agent’s eyes widened even further, and he let the scanner hover _right_ above Tony’s chest.

Oh right. The arc reactor was going to make a gamma detector go insane.

That backfired slightly.

“Off the _charts_ ,” the man breathed, then grinned as he looked up and caught Tony’s eyes. “Direct contact. Bag ‘em and tag ‘em.”

 

\---

 

“Why are we in the same car?” Tony breathed.

Sam blinked, lifting his head slightly, twisting to look at Tony properly. Their hands were definitely handcuffed behind their backs, and they were trapped in the back seat of a typical black government SUV, and Tony was frankly surprised they hadn’t been grilled to within an inch of their lives yet. “You wanted to be in different cars?”

“No. Obviously. But if they were _smart_ , they would not keep us in the same car so that we could talk,” Tony rolled his eyes, and shifted slightly on the bench seat. “Can you reach my pocket?”

He blinked at him. “…huh?”

“My front right pocket. Can you get in there?” He asked, again.

Sam’s eyes flicked down to the pocket, then up to Tony’s eyes, then back down to the pocket again. “…maybe?”

“C’mon. There’s a flat square in there… just… find it, all right? Trust me.”

He licked his lips, then squirmed a little closer to Tony on the seat, twisting slightly so that he could reach behind him. Tony lifted his hips to give Sam a little more space to work with, and the other bit his lip as he squirmed his fingers very carefully into Tony’s pocket.

“Do you feel it?” Tony breathed.

“Yeah, I think so, but it’s – it’s fairly deep in there, gimme a second…” Sam kept squirming his hand deeper into his pocket, and Tony lifted his hips higher off of the seat so that he could hopefully get his hand deeper. And of course, this didn’t look even the _tiniest_ bit awkward or unusual out of context, but he had a plan, if he could get his hands on that little square he could get them out of the cuffs, and then… well, they could do something from there, perhaps. “Ah, I have it, I just – “

The agent cleared his throat.

Both of them froze in the back seat, and twisted to look at the man in the front passenger seat, Sam’s hand definitely still shoved deep into Tony’s pocket, Tony’s hips lifted right off the seat.

“I’m sorry, am I interrupting something?” He smirked. “Is that his hand in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?”

Tony smiled tightly. “I’m delighted to see you, agent.”

“Mmhmm.” He nodded, then flicked his hand at Sam. “Hand. Out. We don’t need handjobs in the back seat of a government vehicle.”

“Handjobs are perfect everywhere.” Tony said, with a nonchalant grin, as Sam tugged his hand slowly out of his pocket, and finally lowered his hips. But there was a noted lack of that little square in his pocket anymore. Good, at least Sam had managed to grab it. “Just because you’re not getting any, agent, doesn’t mean that you have the right to prevent others from getting theirs.”

Sam licked his lips, and leaned on Tony’s shoulder, somehow managing to look like they were just lovers that were casually leaning on each other, and pressed the little square into Tony’s fingers. It wasn’t much larger than a match book, which was probably part of the reason that Tony had it in his pocket at pretty much all times. Flicking it over in his fingers, Tony flicked the power switch with his thumb, relieved that the faint hum it made was swallowed in the sound of the engine. Casual as anything, he pressed the little square to the lock on Sam’s cuffs, and listened to the whirring get just a touch louder as the little device unlocked them.

Sam looked at him sharply, and he raised his brows. _Act natural_.

“Hey. Hey. Respectable distance, you two, this is a _government vehicle_.” The agent said, firmly, waving at them. “Separate.”

Tony shrugged, and didn’t move.

Sam, after a moment – a moment in which he took the little square from Tony’s fingers and unlocked the older man’s cuffs as well – shifted back into his own seat, smiling innocently.

Eyes narrowed, the agent considered them both for a long moment, then said, “So. Sam Wickity.”

“Witwicky.” Tony corrected.

The agent continued on without hesitation. “You reported your car stolen, yesterday.”

“Ah… yeah.”

“And then you told the police officer that it… _transformed_.”

Sam’s eyes widened dramatically, and he squeaked again, slightly. “Well, that was a – a _misunderstanding,_ I mean, of course it didn’t really _transform_ , that’s _crazy talk_. I mean, you know how crazy that sounds, right?”

Tony laughed, grinning disarmingly at this uptight agent. “Complete crazy talk.”

The agent – who still hadn’t identified himself, really, he should get on with that if he wanted to actually be taken seriously – looked back and forth between them, like he was trying to figure out if they were actually “together” or if they were doing this to screw with his head. _Neither_ , Tony thought, rebelliously. _We’re doing it for the lols_.

“You’re Tony Stark,” he said, almost accusingly.

Tony twisted to look at Sam. “Did you hear that? I’m Tony Stark, apparently.”

Sam smirked, relieved. “Imagine that.”

The agent narrowed his eyes at them. “So what’s your involvement in this whole thing, exactly, Tony Stark?”

He grinned almost wolfishly, teeth baring at him as he leaned forward. “If you don’t know why exactly I’m involved in this whole thing, then the information you’ve been lead to believe you’ve obtained isn’t nearly as good as you think it is. Because I, _agent_ , am tied into this more than you can imagine.”

The look in his eyes was gratifying. It was like he had been rendered utterly speechless, unable to form the thoughts to respond.

And then their SUV stopped with a lurch, and the windshield splintered inwards as Optimus Prime’s massive metal hand made contact with it. Stopped with a bitch slap by a pissed off robot. Tony wasn’t sure he could think of anything more eloquent.

The agents were beginning to swear in a new and creative ways, but despite them gunning the engine, the SUV wasn’t going to move another inch.

Optimus’ fingers hooked under the edge of the roof, and peeled it back like the tip of a tin of sardines.

“Get down!” Sam yelped, shoving Tony into the space in front of their seats.

Tony spluttered slightly, and pointed out, “I don’t think it’s _us_ that Optimus is trying to get at.”

The government agents lade little whimpering sounds, amusingly.

“Correction,” Optimus rumbled, offering the two men in the back seat his hand. “I _have_ come for you. Come. We must get away from here before they come with reinforcements.”

“Yeah, no, that sounds like an amazing idea,” Tony panted, grabbing the robot’s thumb and clambering up into the palm, offering his hand back to Sam. And yeah, he admitted it that he was pleased when Sam took his hand, face pale and lips pressed in a thin line, and scrambled up after him. Optimus lifted his hand – and them – up into the air, and Sam gripped tighter on Tony’s hand, sort of alarmed. “I even have the perfect place for us to go.”

 

\---

 

“Holy shit, look at this _house_ ,” Sam breathed.

“Yeah, I don’t recommend touching anything, exactly.” Tony said, moving forward to check on the massive window that curled around his living room. Slapping the wall beside the control panel, he said, “JARVIS, baby… been a long time. You missed me?”

“I found myself pining daily for your return, sir,” JARVIS said, calmly, but slightly sarcastically.

“Who was _that_?” Sam yelped.

Tony twisted to look at the teenager, who was looking up at him with a wide eyed look of awe. Of course, that could have something to do with the fact that Sam was also holding some insignificant award he’d won sometime or another – he didn’t remember winning it, so it couldn’t have been _that_ important, was it? – and looked like he’d just realized, exactly, what hanging out with _Tony Stark_ meant. “That’s JARVIS.”

Sam looked around. “And Jarvis is…”

“Just A Really Very Intelligent System.” JARVIS answered for him, politely. “Tony created me to act as his bulter, his assistant, and, to an extent, as his companion.”

“Created…?”

Tony shrugged. “I knew artificial intelligence was possible because I already made it.”

Sam pointed at him, arching his brow. “You, Tony Stark, are badass.”

He grinned, and patted the wall again. “So I hear. So, JARVIS… you up to date on… everything?”

“You were held captive in a cave in Afghanistan for three months, you were injured and apparently fixed it with what reads as an arc reactor, and you’ve encountered alien non-organic life that seems determined to capture both yourself and your companion, one Samuel Witwicky. Yes, the data link you established via that purloined smart phone provided me with all the pertinent data. However, for the future, _do_ try to steal a Stark phone, will you? It’s not that I don’t appreciate the challenge of interfacing, it is just that the one point seven seconds longer it took would have been better used on decoding the Autobot’s language.”

“One point _seven_ seconds? You’re getting slow in your old age, JARVIS,” Tony teased.

“I’ll be sure to bring that up the next time you’re deciding on whether to upgrade me or the toaster, sir.” JARVIS said mildly. “Your alien friends are pressing rather vehemently to come inside. Shall I let them into your lab, sir?”

“Probably the only place they can fit,” he mused, frowning. “And probably the best place. Yeah, let them in.”

“At once, sir.”

“So… I guess this means that I get to see the famous Stark lab too?” Sam asked, setting the award down in some place where it definitely didn’t belong, but Tony couldn’t really bring himself to care. Hell, he wasn’t sure _he_ even knew where it was allegedly ‘supposed to go’. Pepper would know, but as far as he knew, she was still hanging out with Lennox, Epps and Letty, and he wasn’t really sure he knew where exactly she was. Damn. That might be something he might want to have JARVIS look into. Still, Sam looked sort of ridiculously excited about the idea that he was going to be getting to see the lab. Eager puppy dog.

“Yeah, guess so.” Tony shrugged, with one shoulder. “I mean, unless you want to forgo the tour and go check out my bedroom…?”

“You do know that I’d have to be eighteen before you wouldn’t get in trouble for that sort of thing, right?” He arched a brow, and hopped over the couch, heading for the only door that logically could lead to the lab, which was a large glass door across the left of the massive round living room.

“I won’t tell if you won’t tell.”

Sam snorted, and rapped his knuckles on the door. “This the room?”

“That is definitely _not_ my bedroom,” Tony countered, with a smirk, and headed towards him, stalking towards him like a jungle cat. Of course, maybe that was a bit of an extended metaphor, but from the way that Sam’s eyes seemed to darken slightly, and the teenager swallowed thickly, he sort of figured that it was an apt one, anyway.

If Tony was honest with himself, he wasn’t actually entirely sure _where_ he was going with this. Sam was right – he _wasn’t_ legally old enough for one of Tony’s typical rolls-in-the-sheets-then-get-a-polite-email-from-Pepper-later jaunts, but at the same time, the other sort of responded beautifully whenever Tony gave him even the slightest hints that it could be more than just a little teasing joke. And hey, Sam _wasn’t_ hard on the eyes, robots _were_ trying to destroy their planet, and as far as he was concerned, two attractive mentally stable men that found each other attractive really ought to have some thank-god-we’re-still-alive sex in the middle of apocalyptic crises. Because wasn’t that exactly what this was? The whole world was going to end, dammit, if they didn’t figure out the secret of these glasses, and quite frankly, Tony hadn’t gotten laid in over three months now. Teenager or no, he could _really_ use some release.

Of course, JARVIS interrupted his little stalking with a chirp, and a cheerfully said: “Shall I add Samuel Witwicky to the list of those admitted into the lab, sir?”

Tony halted about a foot and a half from Sam, and took a deep breath, hands on his hips. “Yeah, add him.”

“Of course, sir. Samuel?”

Sam jumped. “Ah… Sam. Samuel makes me sound like I’m… I dunno, old, or something. Just Sam.”

“Sam.” JARVIS corrected himself, neatly. “Please place your right hand against the door, so that I might record your biometrics.”

He blinked, then looked at Tony. “…seriously?”

“Listen to the robot butler, kiddo.” Tony grinned, shaking his head as Sam twisted to do as ordered, and JARVIS recorded his finger prints and retinal scan. He had designed a good system when he created JARVIS, more than capable of keeping Tony and the whole Stark industry running. Without JARVIS, he’d be sunk. “Now,” he said, as he finished. “Are our alien friends in the lab?”

“Yes,” JARVIS said, and the glass door suddenly swung open, slowly and neatly. “Dummy is attempting to play host.”

“Oh god,” Tony grabbed Sam’s upper arm, and tugged him through the door and down the hall towards the lab. “ _Move_ , we need to get there, we need to stop this from being a disaster of intergalactic proportions…”

Sam blinked – but followed.

When they burst into the lab, Tony was half expecting to see fires and explosions and a mess.

What they found, instead, was completely surreal.

Dummy was rolling about the lab, whistling cheerfully, with a large bottle of motor oil held in his pincers, and he was bobbing his arm up and down as he rolled with a whirr. Optimus Prime was sitting just inside the massive door that normally led out towards the garage, and Bumblebee was crawling on hands and knees behind Tony’s collection of vintage collectible cars, tapping the bumpers curiously, as though trying to figure out why the cars weren’t just transforming and standing back up, too. The others, JARVIS advised them, as they approached, were still waiting outside, guarding the house from any potential enemies. Tony wasn’t really sure that their home was exactly _in danger_ , but fine, whatever, they wanted to play bodyguard, at least there weren’t going to be more robots inside his house, trying to destroy it the moment they got pissed off. Butterfingers was rolling around behind Optimus, occasionally poking at the other’s massive red and blue body panels, curiously, and when he did, the leader of the Autobots would twist slightly to look back at him, and in an oddly patient and calm voice, would explain the function of whatever it was that Butterfingers was poking at. Dummy whistled cheerfully, and offered the jug of motor oil he was holding to Optimus, then rolled back to settle on the other side of the work bench he’d apparently pushed over to in front of him, and picked up another.

“…your robot is having a tea party with Optimus Prime.” Sam said, slowly, gaping at the scene.

“…so he is.” Tony agreed, and grabbed the door for the lab, tugging it open as he stepped inside.

Both of the Autobots straightened up when they entered.

“ _Good morning, good morning, to yoooouuuuu_!” Bumblebee’s radio sang as he bounced slightly, abandoning the row of cars to step towards them, ducking when he cracked his forehead off of the roof of the lab – the ceiling here might be a lot taller than they were anywhere else in the building, but they still weren’t designed for alien robots – and lowered himself.

“Hey,” Sam grinned up at Bumblebee. “Good to see you too, big guy.”

Dummy whistled, almost maniacally in his eagerness, and rolled rapidly across the floor, his arm bobbing up and down as he raced towards Tony.

“Oh no you don’t,” Tony held up his hands. “No, no _way_.”

The robot completely ignored him, and rolled faster, if possible, and nearly crashed into the genius before dipping its rudimentary arm to pin him against itself. Yes, Tony groaned, his damn robot that he made when he was fucking fourteen was trying to _hug_ him.

“Yeah, okay, Dummy, I’m glad to see you too, sorry,” he groaned, patting the metal arm, firmly. “Now let me go, we need to work out some stuff, all right? Seriously. Let me go, or I’ll recycle you into a microwave.”

“You are an usual human, Tony Stark.” Optimus said.

Tony grumbled, ducking under Dummy’s arm. The robot kept trying to fucking _hug_ him, and he only had one arm! “Why, because I made a robot that apparently thinks that _hugging_ is the way to go?”

“Because you clearly made a machine for base, simple tasks, and yet care enough about him enough to give him an actual intelligence.” Optimus Prime rumbled, and reached out his massive hand, touching the top of Dummy’s arm. Dummy, for his part, stretched and arched into the touch like a spoiled house cat, whistling lowly. “As I understand humans, personalities and intelligences for machines are… difficult, if not impossible. Yet you have that ability, and did not use it for profit. You used it to create companions for yourself.”

“I made crappy companions,” he grumbled, but there was a little warm blossom of pride in his chest, at that assessment.

Bumblebee’s radio flicked on, and he started singing a song that sounded _way_ too sappy and probably had something to do with being a father for a loving child, so Tony quickly cleared his throat and spoke over him, quickly, turning to Sam. “Glasses! You have the glasses?”

Sam jumped, startled. “Oh, right. I have them. What was the plan?”

“Give ‘em here.” Tony held out his hand, and tried not to feel guilty when Bumblebee made a soft disappointed sounding whine. He’d make it up to big and yellow later.

Digging in the kangaroo pocket of his sweater, Sam offered the metal case out to him. They had both been sort of shocked when the assholes from Sector Seven – whatever that was, apparently Tony’s father had known all about it, but Tony couldn’t remember Howard ever mentioning anything about it – hadn’t tried to confiscate them. But, as Tony had seen when he tugged his lockpick out of his pocket, the government agents had sort of been focused more on what they knew about the aliens than on what they had in their pockets.

“Thanks.” Tony took them, and tugged the glasses out of the case. They were old – _really old_ , actually – all metal and glass, with perfectly round lenses.

Holding them up, he hooked the little metal arms over his ears, and peered through the glass at his own lab and at Optimus Prime, who looked back at him with what he could only describe as a concerned expression, and grinned. “Well? Do I look like Harry Potter?”

Optimus tilted his head slightly to the side, looking confused.

“ _Yer a wizard, ‘arry_!” Bumblebee chirped.

Sam’s bubble of laughter was downright gratifying.

But as he looked out through those glasses, Tony realized that what he had originally thought were little smudge marks were not, that they were little symbols etched into the glass itself, and this must have been what Optimus had been referring to, when he said that Archibald Witwicky had triggered the navigation system – he must have gotten the directions etched on the glass itself. Tugging the glasses off, Tony held them up. “JARVIS! Scan these for me.”

There was a blue light that sprang from the ceiling, then scanned over his hands and the glasses.

A moment later, JARVIS said, calmly, “Would you like a projection, sir?”

“Yeah, project me up.”

The lights of the room itself faded, then a JARVIS projected blue light flared in the room, and a massive hologram filled the room, the same way that Optimus’ hologram from before had filled the street they had been standing on. Sam gasped, and Optimus made a very appreciative sound as he shifted forward, and hey, Tony could totally get behind feeling proud of his lab. JARVIS and him had created something pretty incredible here.

The hologram itself was gorgeous, actually. Huge. Absolutely massive.

There were symbols spread out throughout it, and smooth lines that skimmed between them.

“Is this a map, or just directions?” Sam asked, curiously, padding curiously through the light, symbols falling on his cheek and lighting up his face, as though JARVIS had branded one of the alien symbols on the boy’s cheek. “It’s… incredible.”

“Yeah,” Tony agreed, considering the boy for a moment, licking his lips. “Incredible.”

Sam glanced at him, and grinned, the light washing out all of the dirt and sweat that still clung to his face like a second skin, just making him look blue and otherworldly and like he’d stepped out of someone’s dreams. Definitely a pheromone level moment. God, he was glad Rachett wasn’t here, or Tony was going to get him with the rumbling observations instead.

“Directions.” Optimus said, quietly, reaching a massive robotic hand out, cupping one of the symbols. It was just light, but Tony had designed his holograms to be moveable with contact, and the symbol sort of danced in his palm, twisting and turning to let Optimus Prime observe it from all angles. “I will overlay this with my schematics of the earth, and I will be able to find where it is…”

“Wait.” Tony shifted forward. “Okay, I have some questions about this sort of thing before we try to save the world, all right? How do we stop these… Decepticons?”

Optimus looked up, and lowered his hand. The symbol seemed to swim back to join the others, quietly. “They’re powerful.”

“Yeah, I noticed. Been attacked a few times.” Tony grumbled, running his hand through his hair, then lifted his head, and said, “JARVIS, I think he’s seen enough of the hologram, lift it, bring the lights back up.”

“At once, sir,” JARVIS said, quietly.

“They didn’t want to kill you,” Optimus said, gently. “If that’s any consolation.”

“It isn’t.” He grumbled, then glanced over at Sam, who had actually scrambled up onto Bumblebee’s lap, and was sitting curled back against the robot’s chest, quietly, and grinned when he caught Tony’s eyes. He rolled his eyes, then yelped slightly when Bumblebee’s hand caught him, and lifted him right off the ground. A moment later, Tony was deposited beside Sam in the robot’s lap, and he blinked, feeling a little like a child that was being looked after by a babysitter or something. “…either way, they’ve tried to kill me – or not kill me – a few times, and the only thing we managed to do that worked at all was using incredibly high heat rounds, armour piercing rounds.”

“Probably not a bad idea,” Optimus agreed, with a soft sigh, setting his hands on his own crossed ankles, looking at them. He seemed almost faintly amused by Bumblebee’s insistence to be close to Tony and Sam. “Most of our weapons use high heat for the same purpose.”

Tony nodded, considering that seriously.

JARVIS spoke up. “Might I suggest that we arrange for the military instillations in the area to be equipped with high heat armour piercing rounds? I could send a message to Rhodey to ask for him to ensure this.”

“Yeah, do that.” Tony nodded, crossing his arms as he considered that, tapping his fingernail lightly on his chest, which dinged slightly.

“What _is_ that, anyway?” Sam asked, suddenly.

He looked up, surprised by the question. “Hm?”

“What is that?” He leaned forward, and tapped Tony’s chest. “I mean, _it_ stopped that little freaky Decepticon that tried to kill me back at the warehouse… so why can’t we try and make more of those things?”

Tony hesitated, then tugged the bottom hem of his t-shirt up, tugging it right off. He could just pull it up and try to expose the arc reactor, but let’s be honest, it was just a whole lot easier to just take off the damn thing, and take care of the questions once and for all. “It’s an arc reactor.”

“Woah.” Sam leaned forward, eyes wide as he tapped the metal frame in his chest, just lightly touching the glass circle that Tony had cast to lay over top of the reactor itself, to ensure that there wouldn’t be dust inside the actual device itself. The once-raw wound that had at first plagued Tony around the reactor itself had healed, now, and there were just patches of shiny skin around, where it once had been the worst, healed scars. The metal casing wasn’t really perfect, Tony could probably rework some of the casing, maybe recast the shining blue arc reactor inside, now that he wasn’t in a cave, get it up to even better standards, but hey, the blue light was still shining brightly, and Tony was pretty damn proud of it, come to think of it. And yeah, the awe in the other’s eyes when Sam looked up at him, the blue ring of the arc reactor reflected in his eyes, was pretty damn awesome. “What’s it _for_?”

“It’s keeping shrapnel out of my heart.” He shrugged. “It’s also something of a power source.”

“So that’s why you were able to blast the Decepticon.” He grinned, eyes lit up.

Bumblebee’s massive hand reached over Sam’s head, and a single fingertip very lightly tapped the glass covering of the arc reactor. _That_ could be dangerous, but… the robot was deceptively gentle, actually, despite being huge.

“Who built that?” Optimus demanded.

“I did.” Tony grinned, crookedly. “In a _cave_ , in _Afghanistan_. Yeah, I’m badass.”

Sadly, the massive robot didn’t seem impressed by his badassery. Instead, the leader of the Autobots just shifted forward, eyes whirring slightly as he apparently focused his eyes on him, then lifted his robotic head, looking at him seriously. “That’s an arc reactor.”

“Yep. Miniature one, based on a design of my father’s. One of his big ones is powering a factory of mine.”

“No,” Optimus shook his head.

Tony arched a brow. “Yeah… that’s exactly what it is.”

“No, your father did not design this.” Optimus rumbled, his metallic brows furrowed. “This is based on our Sparks.”

“…Sparks.” Tony repeated.

There was a shifting, whirring, clicking sound behind them, and Tony and Sam both twisted in Bumblebee’s lap, looking up at the yellow robot in surprise. Bumblebee was shifting some of the panels on his chest, and carefully pulled down aside to reveal a glowing blue light in the centre of his chest.

“Oh my god,” Sam breathed, amazed.

“This is his Spark,” Optimus said, gently, moving closer to him. “You might call it a soul, or a spirit. Perhaps, if you were feeling more mechanically inclined, you would simply call it his power source. That is what keeps Bumblebee alive and powered – it is his _Spark_.”

“I touched the Spark of that Decepticon in Afghanistan.” Tony breathed.

“Then you touched his soul.” Optimus rumbled.

“…his arc reactor.” Sam said, slowly, then twisted to look back and forth between the glowing blue light in Tony’s chest, and the glowing blue light in Bumblebee’s. They really _did_ look the same, it was as though someone had been trying to turn Tony _into_ an Autobot… “Wait, they said that your dad worked for Sector Seven, right? So if he worked for Sector Seven, then maybe Sector Seven _does_ know something about that All Spark thing of theirs, or about the aliens, so… maybe the thing your father ‘designed’ was actually something he _discovered_ when he worked for Sector Seven? Maybe your dad really _did_ know about aliens and stuff.”

Tony slumped back against Bumblebee’s chest, blinking. He wasn’t entirely sure if he felt better about his father and his ‘discoveries’ as a result of that possible revelation – or even angrier at him about the lies. Howard Stark wasn’t actually the genius inventor he’d managed to convince everyone he was? Wonderful.

“Or… maybe I’m wrong?” Sam said, awkwardly, clearly sensing the conflict.

“No, I do not believe you are wrong.” Optimus said, with a low rumble as he leaned back, frowning slightly. “We need to place the All Spark on the map, then go retrieve it.”

“No, no, not yet.” Tony held up his hands, remembering why this whole conversation had started in the first place. “No. we were talking first, remember? We need to figure out what we are going to do to defeat the Decepticons. Because what happens when you _get_ the damn All Spark back, huh? Are they just going to _leave_ , just run away back to the stars?”

Optimus hesitated.

“No, I didn’t think so,” Tony grumbled, question answered by the other’s silence.

“Wait, so… even if we get the All Spark thing back,” Sam piped up, then yelped when Bumblebee shifted them both on his lap, apparently trying to get more comfortable, and grabbed at the robot’s arm for a moment. Flushed, he panted for a moment, then cleared his throat, and continued, “So even if we get the All Spark back, there still could be a knock down, drag out, no holds barred fight for the fate of the planet?”

“So long as they think they have a chance to get their hand on the All Spark again… then yes, there will be no end to the Decepticon’s treachery.” Optimus admitted.

“Fuck.” Tony groaned, slumping back and closing his eyes. “Why couldn’t you guys have taken out your aggression on each other on your _own_ damn planet, huh?”

“We did.” Optimus said. “We destroyed it.”

He opened his eyes. “…well, _that_ sucks. All right, well… in the spirit of _not_ destroying our little old planet here… I have a plan to level the playing field. But I’m gonna need your guy’s help.”

 

\---

 

Sam was sleeping.

Tony hadn’t realized this, at first, because his mind was sort of on a million different things at once, and he was moving extremely quickly, brain focused on his construction task and on the programming, which eventually Optimus had started giving him little pointers about, then admitted that he didn’t actually understand _all_ of the details, and called Rachett inside, and Tony and Rachett had spent a good many hours working on the actual programming. Come to think of it, they’d been at this well over twenty-four hours, now, and Tony was starting to realize that _this_ might be why Sam was sleeping.

Leaning back, he pushed his welding mask back up on his forehead, and peered down at the teenager. Sam had crossed his arms on the edge of the work bench that he had been working on – because he _had_ been working, he’d been poring over thousands of documents that had been pulled up from the metaphorically dusty archives JARVIS kept of Howard’s work, trying to translate any indication of the Autobots language to figure out if there was _anything_ that they could use to try and actually defeat the Decepticons – and pillowed his head on his crossed arms, slipping right to sleep, right there. It was sort of adorable, actually, mouth open as he breathed quietly, every once in awhile making an odd sort of snuffling sound, drooling onto his sleeve. Okay, adorable in the sense that a drooling puppy was adorable, anyway…

There was a soft whirring beside him, and Tony looked up sharply. Bumblebee moved forward, quietly, and quietly offered Tony an old battered canvas tarp that had been tucked in one of the cupboards. He almost asked where in the world the Autobot had managed to find it, but then he spotted Dummy just over Bumblebee’s shoulder, bobbing his arm hopefully.

Rolling his eyes, Tony accepted the tarp, and draped it over Sam’s shoulders.

Sam snuffled, and almost woke, then slipped back into sleep again, snoring slightly when he did.

Yeah, okay, definitely puppy adorable.

“Tony?”

He looked up, sharply, clearing his throat. “I wasn’t doing anything.”

Optimus looked slightly confused by the response, but maybe it wasn’t weird for robot aliens to pet the hair of teenagers they hadn’t even managed to actually sleep with. “How is it progressing?”

“Good.” He admitted, clearing his throat slightly as he looked back at his work bench, and at what he had been building painstakingly for the last twelve hours or so. Programming had come first, just in case, and then constructing what he had designed had come next. Logical progression, really, all things considered. It wasn’t perfect, and it could probably use some more work, but hey, this was _so_ much easier than it had been in the cave with only the basest of supplies and equipment. Hell, the parts he had now almost looked damn professional. “Good, actually, it’s going really good. Only I still don’t think I can make it fly.”

“At one point, I had a device that I was able to use to fly…” Optimus considered that. “Perhaps you simply need a separate device…”

“No, see, it has to be able to fly. Unlike you guys, I can’t just turn into a truck and roll to wherever I’m going. And walking would take me three years. So… I have to make it fly.”

The Autobot nodded, finally, and shifted forward a little to sit at the end of the bench. “Are you certain that we should remain here? I can say for certain that this seems to be a safe place, and we can leave Bumblebee with you, to keep Sam and the glasses safe, but we can’t guarantee that the Decepticons won’t find another way to get the information they need, and will find the All Spark themselves. We really need to retrieve it.”

“And normally, I’d be all for ‘gung ho let’s go for it’, but I don’t know if that’s actually a good idea, right now. Look, you’re strangers in a strange land. If the government gets a hold of you… well, clearly they’re trying to get their hands on you. So yeah, I’d rather you stay here, on _private property_ , just long enough to get this thing up and running, and then we’ll… go.”

Optimus ‘hmm-ed’ softly, and nodded. “But Sam will not be protected the way you are.”

“Yeah, well… I’d rather _not_ shove an arc reactor in Sam’s chest just so that he can wear a suit of armour, thanks. It’s probably bad enough that there’s already _one_ human on this planet with his own… spark.”

“You could consider it a point of real pride, to have a spark,” he said, almost gently.

“Well, it _is_ pretty awesome to be the only human with what amounts to an alien robot life source in my chest, yeah, but… at the same time, I’d rather not have a chest full of shrapnel.” He shrugged. “I really thought it was my dad’s design, too. I don’t know if it makes it better or not that he didn’t actually design it, he just apparently got the information from somewhere. But this is the point I don’t _get_.”

Optimus tilted his head to the side, inquisitively, waiting for him to finish his thought.

“Okay, so my father worked for some super secret special forces group. Sector Seven, whatever exactly that is. How did SectorSeven get this information? Do you think they found an Autobot or something?”

“To be honest,” Optimus admitted, quietly, “There are many things I see around me that I feel oddly… familiar about. As though I recognize them, though not quite in their original forms. You holograms, for instance, or your optical keyboards. I recognize the signs that make me believe that whoever invented these things had access to Autobot or Decepticon technology.”

“…both of those things you mentioned _I_ designed. And I didn’t have access to Autobots _or_ Decepticons, cause I didn’t even know they existed.”

The massive robot reached out, and sort of patted Tony’s shoulder, which was a little awkward considering the fact that his hand was the size of Tony’s entire torso, but he managed to _not_ knock the squishy human to the ground. “But you had access to your father’s research.”

“You think _he_ had access to that tech?” Tony asked, not quite sure he believed that idea.

The Autobot leader hesitated, then admitted, “We have scoured the location where Megatron originally crashed. He is not there anymore.”

“…do you think he’s running around free out there, somewhere?” He waved at the walls, as though trying to indicate the entirety of the world outside of the lab in which they stood. “Because I don’t know what things are like where you come from, but I think on _Earth_ , we might notice if there was a giant fucking robot running around through our cities and stuff. In fact, I’m pretty damn sure that’s the sort of things that we’d be completely unable to keep out of the media.”

“I don’t think he’s running free, I think he is in human custody. Somehow. I do not know _how_ they would have captured the leader of the Decepticons, but… I believe that he is not only being held by humans, but that they have been studying him.”

“…humans like my father.” He said, slowly.

“Humans like your father,” Optimus confirmed, nodding quietly. “I believe there is a good chance that a lot of your technology has been inspired by ours.”

Tony pouted slightly, leaning on the bench. He probably should be going back to welding, but at the moment, his mind was on his _father_ and the fact that his father wasn’t, apparently, _quite_ the man he thought he was. “…hn. I almost wish the man was still alive, just… for five minutes, so I could ask him.”

“I imagine that your father would be fascinating to have a conversation with,” he said, with a soft rumble.

“For you… perhaps.” Tony shrugged.

“Perhaps.” Optimus said, after a moment.

“I’m gonna go back to work, all right?” Tony waved sort of vaguely at his work. “I mean, so that we can get back to work faster, so we can get the hell out of here and everything… since you’re really quite so eager to get going at finding that All Spark of yours…”

“Yes, a good idea,” Optimus agreed, rumbling slightly.

“Back to work.” He nodded – and dove back into the welding, flipping his welding mask back down over his face.

Of course, maybe he shouldn’t have been wearing the welding helmet that had the headphones built into them, so that he could continue both listening to the pounding of ACDC as he worked and talk to JARVIS, because then he might have been listening to the sounds of the room at large, and if he had, he might have been slightly less startled when someone set their hand on his shoulder.

Tony yelped – manfully, dammit, it was a very manful sound – and spun around, glad that he had at least been working with the tiny spot welder and not the much larger arc welder, because he very nearly hit Sam Witwicky in the face with the welder.

For his part, Sam let out an even more manful yelping sound, and threw his hands towards the ceiling. “ _Augh_!”

“Holy…” Tony jerked his helmet right off, panting as he gaped at Sam. “What the hell was _that_?!”

“Apparently, that was me with a death wish!” Sam gasped, and slumped back against the workbench, eyes very wide. “…because I think I just had a heart attack. Sixteen is way too early to die. Oh god. I’m dying. I’m officially dying.”

Huffing, he set the welder and the helmet down, then sort of obnoxiously ruffled Sam’s hair. “Relax.”

“Oh, I’m _terribly_ relaxed.” Sam grumbled, glowering at him, then jerked his head towards the glass wall that led out of the lab. “There’s some people here, being rather insistent that they need to come in and talk to you, but… between JARVIS and Bumblebee, they ain’t getting in.”

“Oh. Who is it?” Tony frowned, and pushed past Sam, heading towards the door. When had the kid woken up, anyway? He didn’t look like he’d just woken up after a couple hour nap, but… well. A quick look at the clock told him that he definitely didn’t look exhausted because it had been about eighteen hours since he’d last _noticed_ that Sam was, in fact, sleeping. Oh. Well, apparently the hours were skipping past again. Dammit. Wasn’t like that was new, actually. “Oh. Well. JARVIS! Why are you keeping _Pepper_ out? You know she’s always allowed in here. Unless I’ve specifically told you to keep her out for some reason. I… _didn’t_ tell you to keep her out for some specific reason, did I?”

“Not recently, sir. I’ve been keeping Miss Potts out simply because if I allowed her in, the others with her would come in as well.”

“Others…?”

And that was when Tony realized that Letty was standing across from Pepper, her entire weight settled on her right leg, kind of a sassy little tilt to her body as she talked to the other woman, and Lennox and Epps were standing a bit behind the pair of women, frowning as they talked rapidly about whatever it was they were concerned with. Probably Tony and his insanity of saving a robot species from space.

“…naw, they’re allowed in here, too.”

“I’ll allow them in at once, sir,” JARVIS said, calmly, though he didn’t give them the same routine that he had with Sam, to get his biometrics so that he could walk into the lab at pretty much any time he wanted to, even without Tony’s accompaniment. Was his computer seriously playing favourites with the people that Tony let into his house?

“ _Tony_!” Pepper called, the moment she stepped into the lab, hurrying forward. “Where have you _been_?! You haven’t been answering the phone!”

“I told JARVIS not to bother me with that damn thing,” he shrugged, hands on his hips. “I was busy with more important things.”

“I’m sure you _were_ ,” Letty drawled as she stepped closer, looking Sam up and down with a single eyebrow arched. Oh yeah, that was _subtle_.

Sam squeaking and wrapping his arms around himself didn’t exactly help Tony’s cause.

“Oi. Eyes up here.” Tony smirked at her.

“Holy _shit_.”

And then Tony sort of remembered that Optimus Prime and Bumblebee were still sitting at the end of the work bench, and that Lennox was gaping up at the massive robots with a stunned expression on his face. At the sound of his shock, everyone of the group twisted to look up at them too, and Tony took a long moment to really drink in the moment, to remind himself of the grand majestic _scale_ of the massive robots that were sitting in his lab. “Yeah,” he said, after a moment, hands on his hips. “So there are the robots. Optimus Prime and Bumblebee, ladies and gentlemen.”

Lennox was moving forward, then, expression intense. “Those are the same type of robots that attacked us in Afghanistan…”

“Well, actually, they’re not.” He corrected, holding up a hand. “They’re not. They’re the… good ones. There are two kinds, it turns out… the ones that tried to kill us were called Decepticons, these ones are called Autobots, and they’re the good guys.”

Epps frowned slightly, stepping towards them. “…how do you _know_ they’re the good guys?”

Tony opened his mouth, then closed it again, and twisted to look at Sam. They just sort of stared at each other for a long moment, as neither of them had actually though to _ask_ that question, then Sam held up his hand, and pointed out, “Hey, Bumblebee saved our lives about twenty times over, remember? Because that Decepticon that was a cop car tried to skewer us?”

“Ah, yes.” He agreed, and turned back to face Epps. “Bumblebee saved our lives about twenty times over from the Decepticon cop car that tried to skewer us.”

Epps pursed his lips slightly, considering that. “Hm. Right then.”

He reached up to squeeze Epps’ arm. Was it awkward to have two possible conquests in the same room at the same time? Naw, he’d done that about… eight million times before? He could deal. “So what are you guys doing here?”

“We came to find you,” Letty crossed her arms, looking suspiciously up at Optimus.

For his part, Optimus clearly decided that he had to extend the olive branch. Shifting forward, the leader of the Autobots rumbled, deeply, “I am Optimus Prime, the leader of  the Autobots. It is a pleasure to meet you. We are here to save your planet.”

“Seems awfully big of you.” Lennox nodded, and stepped forward, hands on his hips. “Captain William Lennox of the United States Army. It is an honour to meet you. I hope our species can work together.”

“As do I,” Optimus nodded. “Our planet was destroyed in a foolish war. We wish to save yours from the same fate.”

Tony took a deep breath, looking back and forth between the soldiers, his assistant, the civilian boy, and the robots – then took a deep breath, and started explaining. Everything. Well, at least everything that he knew or that they had managed to figure out. That meant the discussion of the robots, the Autobots, the Decepticons. Hell, as he talked, he even found himself explaining more things – explaining what little they had learned about Sector Seven and what it was and what possibly Howard Stark had managed to discover while working with them. He explained everything he had noticed in his interactions with the Decepticons in the desert, described the photos that Yinsen had found and that little metal bit he’d retrieved from the village. Tony even detailed how, exactly, the arc reactor embedded in his chest was the same as the sparks that whirred away below the chest panels of the Autobots. Bumblebee helpfully showed off his spark again, seemingly quite cheerful, and they’d shown the comparison. At that point, Optimus Prime had taken over, explaining more about Cybertron, the planet that they apparently came from, explaining how it was that they literally were an organic robotic species. Tony had to admit that the proto-forms were _terribly_ fascinating, and he really wanted to investigate _those_. When Optimus discussed the civil war itself, his voice was heavy and mournful, and all he could express was his regret that his planet had been destroyed. He wanted, desperately, for that _not_ to happen to Earth.

“We’d like to avoid that, too.” He nodded. “So why aren’t we out there _saving_ the world?”

Optimus frowned slightly. Yes. Robots can frown. And then, naturally, he glanced at Tony, with an expectant sort of expression, a moment of ‘well, are you going to tell him why we’re sitting here instead of being out there and saving the world?’

Tony sighed, and jerked his head to the side. “JARVIS, show ‘em.”

The lights shifted in the room, so that the focus shifted to the work bench where Tony had been working for the last… two days? Three? Someone – he was pretty sure it was Epps – swore colourfully, and Tony sort of grinned a little. Dammit, he was allowed to be proud of his awesome inventions, wasn’t he?

It was a robot suit.

Just like he had built in that cave in Afghanistan, here Tony had made himself another, only with all the resources and tech that hadn’t been available to him, there. It was sleeker, smoother, far more advanced and far more refined. Instead of just being like a rough suit of massive armour that he’d shoved some engines into so that it could move, this one was designed to fit his body perfectly, to act like a second – though metallic – skin. It wasn’t perfect, he knew that, it still needed some work, but… compared to what he’d created before, he was pretty damn proud of this.

“We haven’t gone out to save the world yet because I’m still trying to work on this thing.”

Lennox frowned, stepping forward, reaching up to touch the knee of the armour. “What, trying to become one of the robots, Tony?”

“Trying to give the humans a fighting chance in case our plan to save the world doesn’t actually work.” Tony grinned, and leaned his hip on the edge of the work bench, arms crossed over his chest. “But I’m not trying to become a robot. If I was, I’d be making myself into a cyborg, not creating a… extremely complicated prosthesis.”

“Prosthesis.” Pepper said, looking unimpressed at that moment.

“Yeah. Prosthesis.” Tony grinned, looking up at it.

“Is it done?” Epps asked, brows furrowed.

“…no.” Tony admitted, looking up at it. “I mean, if I had my way, I’d probably take it through about two more weeks of product testing and further development, just to make sure that it works perfectly before I do something as _ridiculously_ stupid as getting into it… only, of course, that’s not an option, because apparently this is a serious matter of life and death and fate of the planet in the balance. So.” He sighed slightly, closing his eyes for a moment. “Give me twenty four hours, and I’ll have it up and running.”

“Woah, _Tony_ …” Sam said, stepping forward, eyes wide. “It’s a _robot suit_ , it could like… _break_ you if you get it wrong!”

“And that’s why we’re going to call Rachett back in here,” he shrugged. “Because at least he’s an expert in how these things work, so… if he can reconstruct, he can build.”

“If you go and kill yourself doing this…” Epps said, tightly, through gritted teeth.

“Yeah, yeah, I know. Don’t kill yourself to save the world, Tony, it’s not worth it, Tony…”

Pepper huffed slightly. “Well, actually, if you manage to save the world by doing it, there’s an entire possibility that it is, in fact, worth it, but I’d really rather you don’t manage to kill yourself only to discover that it didn’t do a lick of good.”

“Very funny, Pepper.” He rolled his eyes.

“Don’t go on a suicide mission, Tony.” Letty said, firmly. “That last thing this world needs is another damn suicide mission.”

“So no Kamikaze Suit?” He glanced at the metal armour. “Fine. I’ll get it perfect.”

Pepper sniffed again, shaking her head, and headed towards the doors. “Tony, you’ve just come back from months of captivity, the media is clamoring for a press conference to try and figure out what exactly happened, and the world is apparently about to end at the hands of evil alien robots. I have… damage control to do.”

“You need help?” Tony called, shifting his hands to his hips.

She twisted, hand on the door, and blinked at him. “…are you offering?”

He snorted. “No, obviously not. I was offering a plethora of highly qualified human companions to help you out. Letty? Lennox? Epps? Sam? Anyone wanna help Pepper stop me from getting locked in a mental hospital?”

“I actually have some calls of my own to be making,” Lennox shook his head.

“I’ll help her,” Letty shrugged, then glanced at Lennox. “How much information can I give?”

“Nothing,” he admitted, shaking his head. “As of right now, it’s completely classified, chain of command has control of it. Just stick to civilian matters.”

“Can do,” she nodded, and followed the other woman out of the lab.

"I'll stay and help you," Sam said abruptly, which seemed s little odd, since Sam hadn't really been helping even earlier, when he was actually supposed to * _be_ * helping, so why was he offering to help out now?  
  
And then Tony noticed the sort of sides ways, intense look that the teenager was giving Epps out of the corner of his eye. And Epps was sort of giving him an oddly similar assessing gaze, then turned to face Tony before saying, "I'll stay to help too."  
  
This was... not what it looked like, was it?  
  
_Really_?!  
  
This was _really_ exactly what it looked like?  
  
Oh, you have got to be kidding him...  
  
"Fine," Tony said, calmly, refusing to rise to the bait. No. He wouldn't do it. Let these two try and act like macho idiots and try to fight over him, because partially that was just downright hilarious and possibly he could maybe get something out of it. Like a Tony sandwich. Oh yeah, he could totally go for a Tony sandwich. Yep, he was going to let them battle it out like idiots, because either way - boys deciding to work together or boys fighting to the death and only one victor being left behind - there was still the simple fact that the fighting was still over _him_ and either way, Tony won. "But if you two are going to be helping me, you're going to be actually helping.  Sam, go get Rachett, I'm going to need his expertise on the circuitry.  Epps... how are you with micro welding?"

 

  ---

 

Tony pushed the welding mask off of his face again, and leaned back.   
  
And realized that it was just a little _too_ quiet in the lab right now.  
  
Dummy didn't seem to be doing anything "helpful" anywhere that he could see, but perhaps that had something to do with the fact that Optimus and Bumblebee were sitting off to the side, the little yellow car's eyes turned towards the humans that he was apparently supposed to be guardian of, even though his leader was sitting over his shoulder, speaking quietly. Rachett had left the lab again, but he was pretty sure that was partially because the robot really hated being indoors. Seemed to be a little claustrophobic. But hey, Tony sort of figured that if he were an organic robot species that didn't have to stay inside for shelter and as a result probably didn't _ever_ really spend time inside, maybe he'd feel a little claustrophobic too. Ah, yeah, Dummy was sitting just to their left, with Butterfingers, and even though _his_ robots didn't have faces and therefore it was very damn difficult for them to have expressions, they still somehow managed to look absolutely ecstatic to be there, in the shadow of the much larger robots. Goddammit, he was going to be stuck with robots that would be pining for the Autobots when they were gone.   
  
But that, as it turned out, wasn't the worst part.  
  
The worst part was the way that Sam and Epps were sitting by the other workbench, heads together as they talked quietly between themselves.  
  
Oh yeah, that was starting to look more like working together.  
  
Which, hey, technically would probably still be a win. But it could also be an absolutely _not_ good thing, too, so....  
  
Running his hand through his sweaty hair, Tony headed first for the coffee machine, pouring himself a large mug that he then took a very long, very deep swig of, then Tony took a deep breath and headed over to where the others were conspiring.   
  
Epps looked up at him, calm as a cucumber and about as cool, and Sam made a slight squeaking sound and looked immediately guilty.   
  
Oh yeah, they were definitely conspiring against him together. Awesome.   
  
"Hey, gentlemen," Tony said, as he stepped closer to them. Yeah, he could be just as blaise and calm about things, too. Calmer, probably, considering the nervous way that Sam was swallowing as he approached. Even without sleeping in four days. Sleep was overrated, anyway. Everyone knew that.   
  
Well.   
  
Everyone _ought_ to know that.   
  
Tony did his best thinking when he hadn't slept in days. He also made some of his overall _worst_ decisions, but it was really just best not to dwell on that. So he focused on things like Dummy, or his Eastern energy project, or even on the Jericho, which had been made in a pique of exhaustion and caffeine, and though it had sort of gotten him trapped in a cave in Afghanistan for a few months, it _had_ also made him a lot of money.   
  
So Tony made another decision that might not be the best, under the circumstances, but like he said, he hadn't slept in four days, and he was sort of running high on the awesomeness that was his newest and greatest new invention - he was going to save the world from alien invaders with this invention, dammit, who else out there could say that? Hammer? Hammer couldn't fucking say that - and as far as Tony was concerned, he was entitled, at that moment, to make some awesome, if possibly really really bad, decisions. So he plunked himself down between the two men, even though there was no chair between them and he was actually forced to sit with one leg sort of hooked over each of the other's legs. Slinging his arms around their shoulders, he said, calmly, "So. What _are_ you two up to?"  
  
And sure enough, Sam made a wonderfully little guilty sound.  
  
"We're working," Epps said, confidently. "Remember? You said we had to be actually helpful if we decided to stay with you and help."  
  
"And how helpful, exactly," Tony countered, "Have you been?"  
  
Sam blinked at him. "Tony... you finished the suit. The armour's done... I'd say we've been pretty damn helpful."  
  
Tony twisted slightly, still curling his arms around their shoulders, glad he held his coffee mug in the hand that was looped around Epps' shoulders, because his free hands were sort of stroking idly at Sam's hair, and Epps just didn't have any hair for the stroking. At least none that Tony had yet had the opportunity to see, that was.   
  
Okay, now he sort of wanted to start investigating.   
  
_Bad Tony._    
  
"Huh. So I am finished. Well, it's not painted yet."  
  
"Thought you didn't trust us to do that, you were getting JARVIS to paint it," Epps pointed out, with a bit of a smirk.  
  
"I still don't think an all gold suit is the way to go, though," Sam spoke up. "I mean, not that there's anything wrong with gold, or nothing, I can see where you're coming from with the whole 'it'll be first and best in the world and therefore it deserves to be gold like a metal' and all but maybe some black accents or something..."

"What, you want him to look like the human version of your car?" Epps snorted, and Tony supposed that he should be feeling pretty good about the fact that these two men seemed to be getting along well enough that they could joke with each other. Was a little gratifying. "Come on, man... put some green touches in there, or something, everyone knows green and gold look good together."

"Green?" Sam repeated, rolling his eyes. "Oh hell no, then he's gonna look like a Christmas tree or something. Don't do with green."

"Green and gold is a valid colour combination!" Epps said, waving his hand at him, slightly, though Tony also didn't fail to notice that one of Epps' hands was looped around behind him, and was resting very lightly on Sam's hip. Heh. "Look at the Jamacian flag. That's green and gold, and it's a very striking flag."

"No, that's green and gold and black, not just green and gold," the other shook his head. "And green and gold would look like a Christmas tree."

"No, green and red would look like a Christmas tree. Green and gold is the colour of money. Tony likes money."

"I do like money," Tony agreed, thoughtfully, as though having to seriously consider that. Of course he didn't have to seriously consider that, of course he liked money. Who the hell didn't like money? Well... maybe monks or something. Tony could never be accused of being a monk.

Well, at the moment, he sort of felt like one, what with the whole not-having-been-laid-in-months thing... how did people deal with this shit?

People that weren't him, that was.

Either way, Tony shrugged, and tightened his hold on the other men's shoulders, considering them both thoughtfully. "Mm. So you all think that you hate my colour choices. I like the gold."

"Yeah, I don't think either of us seem to be having a problem with the gold," Epps rolled his eyes, shaking his head slightly. "It's the other colours that we have a problem with."

"There... are no other colours on it right now." Tony waved at the suit, which was, in fact, being run through one of the painting machines he had built in his lab, years ago, for painting the body panels of his cars. He liked building things, liked taking things apart and putting them back together a million times more interesting than they had been before he'd taken then apart. Cars, naturally, seemed like the perfect hobby for an eccentric billionaire to have. So he'd built a painting machine to his own specificiations, because all of the ones he'd been able to find out there in the world weren't right, at least not for him and what he wanted to do with them, so he'd built his own painting machine, and thank goodness, the machine just happened to be absolutely perfect for painting a robotic suit of armour. "So what's wrong with it being just gold? I like gold."

"It's bland." Sam shrugged. "I mean... you're going to save the world in that thing, right, breaking this All Spark out of wherever it's being hidden so that the Decepticons can't get their hands on it... you want to blend into the background?"

Tony waved his hand at the suit. "It's a robotic suit of armour. How the hell does a robotic suit of armour fade into the background?"

Epps made a musing sort of sound, frowning slightly. "No, the kid's got a point."

"What?" He blinked at him.

"Well, think about it. We have on one hand a bunch of big old terrifying black evil robots with red glowing eyes, right? Intimidating." Epps shrugged, and nodded to the other corner, where Optimus Prime and Bumblebee still sat, conversing quietly. "And on the other hand you have these good guy robots, which are huge and brightly coloured and totally attention grabbing. And then you roll in... in gold? You'd look... out of place among them. And not in a good way."

Tony frowned slightly, mulling over that idea for a few minutes.

"Yeah, so make it gold and black." Sam suggested.

Sipping at his coffee, Tony leaned back slightly, and was actually rather pleased when two hands reached up to settle on his lower back, each of the men he was sitting in the laps of reaching up to keep him from just tumbling backwards. Either he was really awesome, or they didn't want him to fall back and injure them all or something. He chose to believe it was because he was awesome. Because let's be honest, Tony was awesome. Finally, he nodded his head at the suit, and said, "You're right."

"I knew it!" Sam perked up. "Black would look great!"

"No, not black, I do not want to look like a human Bumblebee," he groaned, rolling his eyes.

"So green, then?" Epps spoke up, grinning slightly. "Cause it'd look good with green."

"No, not green, either. You're both right in that it needs something, but neither of you have an eye for colour. Clearly both of you are just too damn straight." Okay, maybe that was a little awkward of a statement, considering he was sitting in their laps, and both of them didn't seem to mind that he was not only sitting in their laps but also flirting quite blatantly with them... Whatever. Tony transcended boundaries. He had a habit of sleeping with everyone, regardless of their orientations and silly labels. Everyone in the world was a Tony-sexual, they just didn't know it yet. "Hey, JARVIS!"

"Yes, sir?" The robot system spoke up, quietly, calmly.

"Throw a little racing red in there."

"Of course, sir." JARVIS answered.

"...red." Sam said, slowly, after a moment, pursing his lips slightly as he considered that.

"Hn. Red." Epps shrugged, then nodded. "All right, red."

"Am I awesome, or am I awesome?" Tony shrugged, and drained the last of his coffee, before setting it down on the work bench. "Now... while he finishes all that painting... can I interest you two in that now very overdue tour of my bedroom?"

Sam spluttered, flushed, but he had a sort of pink little smile as he looked up at Tony. And Epps, well, Epps laughed out loud, shaking his head slightly, and squeezed Tony's hip.

"Tony?" Optimus' voice interrupted them, and Tony groaned softly.

The universe hated him.

Or the universe really just liked cock-blocking him. He knew the universe must be cock-blocking him. He just really deserved to get laid, was that really too fucking much to ask for?

"Yes, Optimus?" He looked up at him, frowning.

"We've gotten word from the other Autobots that have been keeping surveillance." Optimus Prime looked... displeased. Very displeased, actually, which was not really making any of them feel any better. "We have a military plane incoming, and we're not sure if it's one of your human military vessels, or if it's one of the Decepticons, as they are scrambling their signals. What is your intended action?"

Tony's eyes widened. If it was military, it was either one of Lennox's men coming for them, Rhodey, or something to do with Sector Seven, and the fact that they'd sort of removed the roof of a Sector Seven government vehicle, and Sam and Tony were both fugitives from the American government… as much as he would like to think it was one of the first two, he sort of suspected the latter, partially because he hadn't exactly told Lennox and the others what exactly had happened with the whole being-taken-prisoner-of-the-American-government thing, mostly because he sort of hadn't wanted Lennox to report him to his boss and have Tony taken into custody or something. He was trying to save the world, not be arrested for it.

And if it _wasn’t_ military…

Well, that meant it was Decepticons, and if it was Decepticons, he was probably going to be dead. Awesome.

Okay, well… the Autobots weren’t really going to let him _die_ , but… either way, it probably wasn’t going to end well, was it?

Sliding reluctantly out of Epps and Sam’s laps, he stretched, and ran his hand through his hair before he leaned back and hollered, “JARVIS! Hurry up with that paint job, I’m pretty sure I gotta get suited up in about… ten minutes, all right?”

“Of course, sir.” JARVIS agreed, quietly.

“What do us squishy humans do?” Sam asked, standing himself, following Tony as he headed over towards the bench. Epps was just a step behind him, frowning slightly. At least Epps could handle himself if Tony handed him a gun, and he had a few prototypes sitting around the place that probably should be contained at Starktech headquarters, but Tony was awfully good at breaking the rules, and he figured if _he_ made them, he should be allowed to play with them at home. Sam, on the other hand…

“You… are staying here.” Tony pointed at him. “Bee! Don’t let him leave here, got it, he’s your charge, it’s your job to keep him contained.”

Bumblebee drooped, playing a _whoot-whoot-whoot-whoooooooot_ sound of disappointed trumpets.

“Hey, hey, hey. No.” Sam pointed at Tony, jaw tightly grit. Stubborn kid. “ _No_. I am not going to back down, I am _not_ going to just stand back in the shadows and let you fight my battles for me, dammit. I’m wrapped up in this too, remember? I’m a part of this. I am _going to be part of this_.”

Epps frowned, and squeezed Sam’s shoulder. “Kid, backing off when a fight is too big for you ain’t cowardice.”

“Yes, that’s _exactly_ what it is!” Sam yelped.

There was something about the way that the other flatly refused to back down that sort of made Tony think of himself, at sixteen, fresh out of MIT with his first doctorate, frustrated with the blank walls and judging expressions that met him everywhere he went, people that thought he’d been coasting by on his father’s name and money and hadn’t actually earned everything he had, which he had gotten all through sheer tough guts and determination. He remembered, all too clearly, bumping into teenagers his own age that giggled about whether or not they were going to be able to borrow the car, and thinking about his own frustrations, over whether or not the Ministry of Defense was going to be offering Starktech a renewal on their contract.

Dammit. This was not fair, playing his own past guilts against him.

Taking a deep breath, Tony sighed, and crossed his arms over his chest. “Fine, Sam, I won’t lock you inside. But you are sticking _right_ to Bumblebee’s side, and if he tells you to get inside, you are _listening_ to him, you got it?”

“Fine. I’ll do that.” Sam grinned, perking up.

“We need to face the threat,” Optimus said, seriously, and started moving towards the door that led out towards the outdoors, at the other end of the lab.

Epps looked oddly displeased. “You’re actually going to go out there?”

“Uh… yeah.” Tony nodded, and rapped his knuckles on the workbench. “You guys wanna help me get into that suit? I’d set up a robot system to get me dressed, but it’s a bit last minute, and I’m pretty sure I’m going to need to be manually screwed into it.”

“You haven’t even had a chance to _test_ it.”

“Yeah, well… sometimes you have to risk your life for the betterment of the world, babe.” Tony patted his shoulder, and grabbed a pair of screwdrivers, offering one to each of the other men. “Start screwing me in.”

“…and here I thought we were getting you dressed.” Sam said, innocently.

Tony grinned, his slow smile getting wider as he considered Sam for just one long moment, then twisted to look at Epps, and said, “We’re going to get him naked after all of this, all right? You, me, my bedroom… we’re getting him naked.”

Epps arched a brow. “You’re sure I’m into that?”

“You’re into that.” He said, confidently, and stepped into the metal boots that he’d built – and JARVIS _had_ done a very nice job on that hot rod red – and wiggled his feet into the most comfortable positions. “All right, men… start screwing me in. And yes, any pun I make is entirely intended, now… get me screwed in so we can save the world. And let’s get moving quickly, I think that plane is coming a touch faster than we are. And yes. _That_ pun was intended, as well.”

 

\---

 

The robot suit that Tony wore was like a second skin, clinging to him like a symbiotic alien, curling its metal fingers around his arms to encase his hands, curled around his digits, his legs, his waist, cupping his ass like a lover, the helmet itself curled around his jaw like the softness of a mother’s touch that he’d only ever imagined and never actually experienced himself. It was as though it was curled around him, breathing for him, trying to take over the hard work of living. There were little servos and joints against his skin, but he’d designed it carefully, to make sure that the suit kept him encased and safe like an exoskeleton, but didn’t pull him apart.

It might pull him apart.

He wished to all hell that he’d had more time for testing, more time to work on the engines, to figure out if he actually _could_ fly with this thing, because if it didn’t work…

God, if he died because of his own science, he was never going to let himself over this.

His footsteps were _loud_ , ringing metal on cement as he walked out of the lab, out onto the asphalt road that led out to the rest of the world, and looked up at the sky. There was more than just that one plane, that Optimus Prime had first caught his sights on. There were dozens, now, and they were definitely American military, of some kind, but they weren’t brought here by Lennox. Epps confirmed that, lowly, “Those are spooks. Area 51 shit.”

“Sector Seven, actually.” Tony said, and grinned slightly at the sound of his own voice. It had to be modulated, through the electronics in the suit, because of course his voice would have been too muffled through that thing. He sounded downright badass. “Because I designed those planes. They’re actually in the prototype phase… they’re not supposed to be _used_ right now.”

“…well, that sucks.” Sam said, blinking slightly.

“Yeah. I think I want you guys _back_ _inside_ ,” Tony said, turning to look back at Epps and Sam, catching them through the display he’d built into the helmet. It was sort of strange, to be looking at them, but not _really_ looking at them at that moment, because they were right in front of him, but they were sort of spread across the panoramic screen, which let him zoom in on the flush on Sam’s cheeks and his increased pulse at the idea of going inside, or zero in on the way that Epps tightened his fingers on the stock of the experimental weapon that Tony had given him, displeased by the idea. “Look, I know, you said you weren’t going to be backing off, and you’re not, but if this is the military coming to get us… they’ve already tried to take you in custody once, Sam, and if they figure out that you’re involved, Epps, your career is in trouble. So get inside. The Autobots and I can – “

And then a voice on a loud speaker interrupted him. “Alien life forms! Stand down. We will be taking you into custody pending an investigation into your presence on earth.”

Ironhide growled, his guns flipping out of his shoulders, humming as they warmed up. “Oh no, that is not happening. _You_ stand down.”

“Oh god,” Sam said, mirroring what pretty much everyone was thinking. “That’s not going to end well.”

“ _Ironhide_.” Optimus ordered, as he stepped forward, looking up at the planes. “We _do not_ harm humans.”

He growled, displeased, but lowered the guns slightly.

Frankly, Tony couldn’t really blame Ironhide for continuing to look more than a little suspicious still.

But Optimus Prime, ever the noble, was looking up at the experimental planes – and it was really starting to piss Tony off that they kept getting attacked with _his_ experimental tech, goddammit – with a serious expression as he said, “I am Optimus Prime, the leader of the Autobots. We do not come to your planet as threats, we are here to save you from a mutual enemy of ours that wants to do you harm. We are seeking the same thing that they are, though we simply wish to keep them from using it to harm you.”

And then someone with an itchy trigger finger in one of the planes in the back of the formation fired.

A spray of bullets, maybe four or five, slammed into Optimus’ chest, and the massive robot sort of reeled back, looking startled. He genuinely hadn’t been expecting that, but if there was one thing Tony had learned, when dealing with robots, was that the Autobots were startlingly naïve. Adorable, in that sense, but naïve. Optimus had really thought that if he just walked out, introduced himself, then everything would be all right, and maybe they could even work together. And hey, maybe if that idiot with the itch hadn’t fired, they could have.

But his leader being shot triggered Ironhide, naturally, and his guns snapped back up and he baked, “ _Rock and roll_!” before he began firing on the planes.

Well, no going back now.

Tony pushed Sam _very_ firmly behind Bumblebee, and broke into a run – faster than he ever would have been, if he had actually run on his own, without the suit – up to Optimus’ side. “Okay, we have got to do _something_ …”

“Ironhide, _stand down_!” Optimus roared, but the planes were already firing on them, too, and Tony was infinitely grateful for the armour when a few of the bullets pinged off his own armour.

Naturally, someone had to finally up the ante and pull out something larger than the mutual machine guns that the humans and the Autobots were firing at each other, and long run, Tony figured it sort of should have been obvious that it was going to be the humans that did it. He wasn’t going to say that it was because the Autobots were a more advanced life form – though Tony sort of felt like they were – but because humans, as a rule, are just assholes.

And that human fired a missile.

It exploded just behind where Optimus and Tony stood, too fast for either of them to find a way to stop it, neither of them noticing that it was coming, and Tony’s mind, first, went to the squishy humans that he had ordered to hide behind Bumblebee and hoped to all fuck that they’d listened to him. Because even Tony, armour and all, was thrown by the blast, and felt himself dropping, almost casually, over the edge of the cliff that his house was situated on, tumbling through the air towards the ocean below.

…why was he hearing bells?

“JARVIS!” He gasped, as he tumbled. “Light up the jets, it’s time to see if I can fly.”

“I have faith in you, sir,” JARVIS’ voice filled the helmet around him, then the jets in his boots flared to life. His free fall caught, weirdly, not quite balanced, and Tony really thought for a moment that he was going to crash into the cliff walls, but between the stabilizers that he had built into the gloves – and thank his blackout engineering for those – and JARVIS’ stabilizing influence, he managed to swing up, mostly, into a standing position. A moment later, Tony flew up over the crowd and back into the group, jets flaring.

It was Bumblebee’s delighted and gleeful expression that greeted him, as the yellow Autobot cheerfully said, “ _Teacher says that every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings_!”

Tony laughed.

Hey, it was damn funny.

But then the laughter faded, when he realized that some of the planes had actually landed, and there were men and women in black ops type suits running around the area, and that one of them had _Sam Witwicky_ in a headlock.

 _No_.

Tony swung around to face that soldier, and felt the arc reactor in his chest start to hum as it not only powered his suit, but also the weapons that he’d built into the palms of his suit, and it was those weapons that he was powering up now, firing at the man. He missed, at first, striking just beside him, and he swore, loudly. This, of course, alerted the man that someone was _trying_ to shoot at him, and the soldier snarled, tugging Sam up as a human shield. Naturally, Tony couldn’t abide this, he had to save him, but then one of the planes – he’d forgotten about the fucking planes at that moment – had fired at him, and Tony was thrown back over the cliff.

“ _Clap, Peter, clap_!” Bumblebee’s radio shouted, and Tony sort of thought it was a little ironic that Bumblebee was treating him like he was a fairy that had to be rescued.

It was Optimus that caught him.

Should he feel bad that these robots kept fucking rescuing him? He didn’t like needing to be constantly rescued.

It was an almost armour crunching sound, metal on metal, and he hoped that he wasn’t going to have to do many repairs as the leader of the Autobots caught him in his palm.

“Sam,” Tony said, gaping up at the massive robot.

“He is above.” Optimus all but dropped Tony on the cliff’s edge, and hauled himself back up, as well, then hesitated. He might have plenty of expressions and all, but he wasn’t nearly as easy to read as a human would be, in the same situation. So Tony really didn’t know what that expression meant, he wasn’t able to read it – and a moment later, as he flared the jets and rose up to see what Optimus was seeing, he realized he wasn’t sure he wanted to see.

The planes were holding them back, forcing the Autobots back against the wall of the house, and the soldiers appeared to be pulling out, trying to get out of the situation entirely.

Normally, this wouldn’t bother Tony, because good god, he’d rather they weren’t there.

Except that the planes had employed some kind of electrified net, and it was wrapped around _Bumblebee_ , hauling him forward, actually lifting him right off the ground. The other planes were still firing on the other Autobots, keeping them back, which was too much, _too much_ , because they were hauling away their littlest bot, and Tony _couldn’t let that happen_.

Only, once he was over the crest of the cliff, they were firing at him, too, and Tony wasn’t able to run to the Autobot’s rescue, even though he _needed_ to save Bumblebee.

The bot was reaching back towards them, letting out desperate little sounds, a jumbled mix of radio sounds and engine whines that didn’t actually form words but sure as hell managed to express his desperation as he tried to get free, tried to work out of the nets, but the planes were getting further away, and they were _taking Bumblebee with them_ …

“Son of a bitch!” Tony howled.

And then the planes started firing missiles again, and they started blowing at their feet, and Tony threw himself back down towards the door of the lab, trying to find the other humans, trying to save them before this all went to hell – and then a missile exploded just to the left of his head, and Tony was slammed into the wall of his own house, and everything went black.

 

\---

 

When Tony opened his eyes, he actually thought he was in a cave in Afghanistan still, with Yinsen crouched over him.

“…Yinsen?” He croaked, trying to force his eyes open.

“Sorry, nope.” The shadow that was peering over him said, and he closed his eyes for a moment, trying to regain his strength before he opened his eyes again, looking up at the shadow. The shadow grinned, and sort of seemed to coalesce in the startlingly bright lights over their head into Sam Witwicky’s bloody face. “Just me.”

“Sam!” He gasped, and half sat up, then realized how much that hurt, and slumped back to the ground. “Ow.”

“Yeah, well… you got partially blown up.” Sam shrugged, and reached up to brush his fingers along the edge of Tony’s jaw, lightly. “Sorry about that. How’re you feeling?”

Tony took another deep breath, closing his eyes as he assessed his litany of injuries in his mind. His body appeared to be, based on his rough assessment, in one piece. He was able to wiggle all of his toes and fingers, and was able to feel the heavy weight of the armour still wrapped around himself. The thick neck of the armour was holding his head and neck up off of the ground, preventing his head from actually touching the floor, and he sighed before he asked, “So did you take off the mask?”

“No, it got blown off.” Sam said, and when Tony opened his eyes again, the teenager was grinning sort of sheepishly at him. “Sorry.”

“Happens.” He sighed. “But hey, it worked.”

“Yeah, it did.” Sam said, and his fingers were in Tony’s hair, now.

“Well, I’m glad to see you made it through the blast, anyway.” Tony said, watching him. “Is Epps okay, too?”

“I don’t know.”

“…what do you mean?” he furrowed his brows, confused.

The teenager took a deep breath, then shifted forward a little, slipping his hands down behind the other’s shoulders, and helped haul Tony up. It hurt, but at least the suit was helping, the arc reactor-spark thing humming a little louder as the suit worked to make him sit up. Tony wasn’t really sure if his own body would have been able to hold him up like that. The suit did it, though. “Look, where we are.”

This was not his lab. Not his living room, not even his bedroom.

This was the cargo hold of an experimental airplane that the American military wasn’t supposed to have its hands on but somehow did.

“…son of a bitch, they _kidnapped_ us?”

“I think the correct word is ‘arrested’, actually.” Someone else interrupted them, and Tony’s head snapped to the front of the plane, startled to see the same agent that had locked them up in the car, only a few days ago. The same man they’d left there on the side of the road when they had run away with the Autobots. Awesome. “And you’re definitely both under arrest.”

“You know, we have now encountered you _twice_ , and you’ve never mentioned your name.” Tony said, bracing himself on his arm.

“Agent Simmons.” The man said, smoothly. “Of Sector Seven. And you’ll give me the respect I deserve, gentlemen.”

“Respect is earned.” Sam said, calmly.

“Couldn’t have said it better myself,” Tony said, with a slightly shrug.

Simmons scowled. "Oh, I have _earned_ respect. I have gotten the respect of men and women that make you two look like _worms_."  
  
Sam scoffed. "You do know that he's _Tony Stark_ , right?   
  
The agent hesitated for a moment, as though he really had forgotten that fact, then he scoffed, and waved that argument off. "Clearly, being Tony Stark isn't quite the amazing thing you're both trying to make it out to be, or you wouldn't be in Sector Seven custody right at the moment, would you be?"  
  
It was Sam, to Tony's mild surprise, that got all up in arms, heated about that statement. Ah well, Tony _had_ always inspired strong feelings in people. "Listen up, chuckles. Tony Stark is a goddamn hero. He has saved your ass more times than you even know about because you apparently can't pull your head out of your ass long enough to notice that he's a bona fide hero, and if you were paying attention, you would notice that he's wearing a fucking _robot suit_ that he built in the last three days to save a planet full of ungrateful bastards like you that really probably don't deserve to be saved. So yeah, being Tony Stark might not mean as much as it used to. It means a whole lot more."  
  
Silence met his proclamation for a long few minutes, then Tony shrugged. "Couldn't have said it better myself."  
  
"Sure you could've," Sam muttered. "You'd have said it with explosions."  
  
In that moment, Tony decided that if the world really _was_ about to end, it was not about to end before he managed to get this kid in his bed, because hot damn, that was the best compliment Tony had received since Dummy won an award at the science exhibition at MIT when he was fourteen.   
  
Of course, none of Sam's eloquently worded defenses of Tony did any good, long run, because Simmons was in control of the airplane, and the airplane was going where he wanted it to go.  
  
That is, they were going to Sector Seven.  
  
Or, so Simmons said.  
  
All Tony saw was the Hoover dam.  
  
"I thought you said we were going to see a super secret government secret base," Sam grumbled as he and Tony were hustled along out of the plane and towards the dam itself. Tony was still wearing the robot suit - he really had to come up with a better name for it than that - so he wasn't really able to be hustled all that much, but Simmons and his partner, who looked like he'd been sucking on coffee grounds for the last five years seemed bound and determined to _try_ to hustle them. "All I'm seeing here is the Hoover Dam."  
  
"What you are seeing here, gentlemen, is the culmination of a hundred years of government work." Simmons said, sweeping his arm towards... the dam. It was just the Hoover Dam.  He was wearing aviator sunglasses, now, as though he was trying to make himself look as much like a douche as possible. Okay, so Tony owned a few pairs of similar glasses, but _he_ made them look good.   
  
"It's one of the largest American tourist locations," Tony said, frowning slightly.   
  
Simmons pursed his lips. "It is _also_ the largest Sector Seven base. What you are about to see is highly classified. If you ever tell anyone - _anyone_ \- about what you are about to see here, then I will have to be forced to kill you."  
  
"Listen, asshole." Sam glowered at him, and Tony felt another surge of hell-yes-I-am-going-to-bed-you as the teenager took a half step forward, brows furrowed. "You need us. I am the one the Autobots will talk to, and Tony actually knows how to fight these damn Decepticons. Between the two of us, we hold the secret to saving the world, and if you don't back the fuck up, you are not going to _have_ us to help save the damn world again, because Tony is going to fly us out of here and you are going to be on your own, Mister Sector Seven."  
  
Tony grinned, and reached up to set his robot gloved hand heavily on Sam's shoulder, grinning with pride. "That's my Sam. Brilliant, ain't he?"  
  
Simmons scowled, but reluctantly led them towards the dam.   
  
Now, as much as this definitely was just the same tourist attraction that hundreds of thousands of people passed through and over each year, the area that they were walking into was not somewhere that the tourists ever got to see. Hell, Tony could remember his father mentioning this place, which made a lot more sense now in retrospect to realize that his father had apparently been part of their damn Sector Seven, but his father had certainly never mentioned a veritable secret city under the Hoover Dam. It was huge down here, a massive network of scaffolds and offices, like an office building built about a warehouse under the ground. Tony was reminded, strongly, of the Fraggles and the Doozers.   
  
But it was what they saw when they entered the heart of the structure that really changed everything.   
It was a massive warehouse space that they stepped into, with cranes and equipment spread around, but at the far end of the room was a figure, encased in ice. Massive, humanoid, dark and almost viscerally evil looking, as though looking at it you could taste evil on the back of your tongue, sharp and dark like sucking on blood covered pennies, stood a massive Decepticon. He didn't move, but he was encased in ice that was actively trying to be kept frozen.   
  
"Holy shit," Sam breathed.  
  
Tony stepped forward, the fingers of his mechanical suit touching the brass plate that was attached to the base on which he stood. "NBE-ONE. Non-biological entity? Seriously. He has a name."  
  
"He is NBE-ONE, the greatest scientific find of the American nation," Simmons said, confidently.   
  
"He," Tony pointed up at the massive robot, "Is Megatron. Leader of the Decepticons. The organic robotic race that is coming to find the All Spark, that was hidden here tens of thousands of years ago, and probably will destroy the planet, because they want to use our machines as their army. He is the _leader_ of those bastards, and you are keeping him locked up in the scientific equivalent of a _defrost cycle_?!"

Simmons drew himself up, trying to look impressive, or something - it didn't work - and said, haughtily, "We are not required to answer to _you_ , Mr. Stark. As you can see, we are clearly the superior race here, as _he_ is _our_ prisoner."  
  
"Superior race." Tony repeated, gaping at the man. "Good god, you actually believe that Independence Day propaganda shit."  
  
"You only have him prisoner because you found him already frozen!" Sam protested, waving at the massive machine.  
  
"We caught your little yellow friend," Simmons said, smugly.  
  
Wrong thing to say.  
  
"Speaking of..." Tony turned to face him properly. He'd checked, while still on the plane, and sure enough, though the helmet had been torn off, the link to JARVIS remained, and he'd had his computer system running diagnostics on his suit since he'd gotten the chance. He wasn't sure if everything was full operational, but hopefully it was going to be operational _enough_ to take care of this one little job. "We want Bumblebee."  
  
"That's not an option," Simmon's partner, who sort of looked like a drowned rat next to Simmon's already drowned ratty-ness.   
  
The smirk on Sam's face was sort of gratifying.  
  
"JARVIS, full power to repulsors," Tony said, calmly, and even without hearing the AI's comforting voice coming out of the speakers, he could feel the thrum of the arc reactor warming up, and he could hear the humming of the cannons in his gloves lighting up. After all, they might have been originally built as stabilizers for flight, but they had a wonderful secondary purpose. As weapons. He lifted his left hand, the light in his palm growing brighter and brighter, the hum getting even louder until there was no way that they couldn't know what was about to happen to them.   
  
Grinning rakishly, he said, "Let's make it an option."  


**

 

"Bee!"  
  
It was funny, Tony thought, how quickly someone could get attached to someone.   
  
It had taken him years to warm up to some people, but Pepper he'd fallen in love with - at least in some perfectly disfunctional way - the moment she walked into that office for the interview. She wasn't the one being interviewed, she was the office administrative assistant that was supposed to be _announcing_ the candidates for the interviews for position as his personal assistant, but Tony had known, right then and there, that she was perfect and had told everyone else to fuck off. No really, he had, and Obie still hadn't forgiven him for that. The moment Rhodey had punched the guy that had Tony pinned in that alley, twenty something years ago, when they were both scrawney kids and Tony had been the awkward MIT student that was actually supposed to be giving a lecture at Rhodey's school about 'going for your dreams' or some typical bullshit, the very _moment_ that the guy had howled and blood had spurted and Rhodey turned and said, "Hey, genius boy, you all right?" Tony had fallen utterly in love with him. Even now, years later, he'd fight for Rhodey, if he had to. Epps had managed to bust his way into his short list of people he'd actually allow himself to sleep in the presence of with a slow, casual grin and a heavy hand pressed to the back of his skull, ordering him to stay down as he shielded him with his own body. Regular people don't shield you with their own body. Somewhere between 'Get into my car' and 'pheromone levels indicates that he wishes to mate with the elder human male', Tony had listed Sam as one of his top five most current important people.   
  
 And the Autobots?  
  
 Well, let's just say that he was willing to shoot a government agent in the face - in a government facility - for Bumblebee, so yeah, he was just a _touch_ attached.  
  
 So he didn't even mind when Sam broke away from his side and rushed into the room that they had apparently deemed to be Bumblebee's containment area, where the government goons that were keeping him tied down kept hitting him with concentrated bursts of liquid nitrogen. Tony got it, he did, they had managed to keep Megatron frozen for ages with the same sort of tech, naturally it made sense to them to try the same with another robot.   
  
 But even without proper vocal cords, the sounds that Bumblebee were making were absolutely horrifyingly heart breaking.   
  
 "Stop that!" Sam howled, dashing towards Bee, physically grabbing one of the men, who were all dressed in these ridiculous radiation suits, by the shoulders, and all but throwing him away. "You're _hurting_ him!"  
  
 "It's a non-biological entity - " one of the men started to say, as though defending their actions.  
  
 "His name is Bumblebee," Tony said, grabbing the man by the tubes that ran from his oxygen tube, tugging him away from the machine he'd been using to blast the Autobot with. He knew he cut an intimidating figure in the suit, even with the helmet blasted off, and the paint chipped and scarred. "Remember that."  
  
 "It's Non-Biological Entity Mark Two." Simmons said, walking into the room, coldly, though he did wave his hands at the men, silently ordering them to step aside.   
  
 "Bumblebee," Sam corrected, fiercely, and scrambled up onto the platform that they'd tied to yellow Autobot to. Crouching on the robot's chest, he tugged the bindings that kept him pinned off, tossing them aside. "C'mon, Bee, it's okay, we're here for you..."  
  
 The pained sounds were continuing, though, and Tony hurried forward - or hurried as much as the suit allowed him without actually flying - and reached up to help Sam with the binders. Simmons was watching, frowning slightly, almost fascinated looking. But they were saving their _friend_ , fuck the agent.  
  
 The moment Bumblebee was free, he surged up, and Sam tumbled backwards.  
  
 He didn't hit the floor, though.  
  
 Bumblebee caught him, cradling him in one arm as he surged to his feet, and Tony let out a yelp of surprise when the Autobot caught him by the shoulder and shoved Tony behind him. An extra bit of armour - like a helmet - slid down over his face, and with the arm that _wasn't_ cradling Sam, he aimed a gun that had been built into his arm at the humans.  
  
 Tony couldn't really blame him.  
  
 "Woah, woah, Bee!" Sam yelped, startled, reaching up to catch the robot's jaw, trying to calm him down. "It's okay! You don't have to shoot them!"  
  
 "Even if they deserve it," Tony grumbled.  
  
 Sam hesitated. "Even if they deserve it. C'mon, man, you're bigger than that. Literally."  
  
 Bee kept the gun trained on the soldiers and Sector Seven men - who had found guns somewhere, and were training them on the massive robot - for a long moment, then finally the armoured helmet slid back into place, and he lowered the weapon.  
  
 Tony sighed, relieved. As much as he was pissed, he didn't want Bee to shoot anyone.  
  
 Bee didn't put Sam down, though.  
  
 "Right." Tony stepped out around the robot, frowning as he did, resting his own robotically gloved hand against the robot's knee. "Now. We hear you have the All Spark here."  
  
 "We have no such thing."  
  
 "You got any other weird alien things?" Sam arched a brow, one of his arms looped around Bumblebee's neck. "Because if you have one of those anywhere down here, I sort of think there's a very good possibility that it's exactly what we're looking for."  
  
 Simmons sort of looked like someone had just force fed him a lemon. "...we have something similar."  
  
 The room that they were lead to was massive, and seemed to have been hewn out of the rock around them, rather than built. It was as though they had found this massive thing in the middle of the Nevada desert, and decided to just drop a Dam on top of it. Actually, looking around, Tony sort of thought that maybe this was _exactly_ what they had done.   
  
 It had to be the All Spark, the Cube, whatever they called it, what they were seeing. It was huge, square, and made of the same blue-black metal that the piece Yinsen had retrieved from the desert had been.   
  
 It was also covered, top to bottom, in the Cybertronian language.  
  
 Tony was shocked to find that it was also _beautiful_.

Bumblebee finally set Sam down, now that they were in this room, and stepped towards the Cube, and even the Sector Seven men had to be able to see the awe and reverence on the Autobot's face.   
  
 "Woah, woah, woah, stay back from this thing. We don't know what it's function is, we don't know what it can do - " Simmons started.  
  
 "I'm pretty sure, _Agent Simmons_ , that _he_ knows what he's doing." Tony said, sarcastically.  
  
 Bee reached up, and lightly touched the sides of the massive cube. A blue light flared inside of it, then traced through every line of the writing over it. Then the Cube began to move and shift and change, and began transforming the same way that the Autobots did, compacting itself, until finally, a Cube that was maybe a foot squared dropped into Bumblebee's hands, and he cradled it, carefully, as though it was the most valuable thing he'd ever touched.   
  
 Considering that it was the repository of all of the knowledge of the whole of Cybertron, and that the Decepticons could use it to make every machine on Earth become one of them...  
  
 Yeah. Maybe it was the most valuable thing that Bumblebee had ever touched.  
  
 "Bee?" Sam said, quietly, looking up at him.  
  
 Bumblebee turned to face him properly, and crouched in front of Sam, holding the All Spark in front of him, as though presenting an offering. Sam reached up, warily, touching the carved sides of the Cube.  
  
  _God_ , Tony just wanted to eat him up.  
  
 "All right, _that_ *is the property of the Government of the United States of America," Simmons tried, stepping forward.  
  
 Bee's helmet snapped back down over his face, and his radio crackled, " _Bitch I'mma kill you! You don't wanna fuck with me -_ "  
  
 "Woah, okay, I think that's enough of _that_ ," Tony grabbed Bee's arm. "Back off, Simmons, or we let the man-killing robot that wants to - you heard him - fuck you up, got it?"  
  
 "Now, see here, Stark..."  
  
 "Don't  talk to him like that." Sam snarled, stepping forward, then grumbled slightly when Bumblebee tugged him back out of the line of fire again, sheltering him in his arms. "You have no right to treat Tony like that - "  
  
 Simmons snarled, holding up his hands, saying, firmly, "You can stay out of the adult's business, kid, we have real, _grown up_ issues to deal with here..."  
  
 "You're doing a shitty job of it." Tony snarked.  
  
 The agent stiffened his spine, baring his teeth at them, and ordered, "Men! Arrest Tony Stark, let’s let him stew in a cell for awhile, maybe he’ll gain a little respect for his betters…”

“Oh, don’t even go there,” he lifted his hands, repulsors starting to glow brighter. There were guns being lifted and aiming at him, but _seriously_ , unless they were amazing shots, 90% of him was still covered by his armour, and he was pretty sure that his arc reactor, his very own slice of Cybertronian apple pie life, was more than capable of decimating a good half of this entire fucking building, if he really wanted to do it. He was _not_ scared of them.

“Stand down!” A voice barked, and Sam let out a whoop.

The Sector Seven men twisted to look at the entrance to the All Spark chamber, and there stood _Optimus Prime_ , half bent so that he could actually stand in the hanger style door, glowering in the room. Between his knees stood Lennox, Epps, Letty – and of all people, Pepper and Rhodey – and they looked a little startled, quite frankly, to be there. Well, _Pepper_ looked startled, the others sort of looked like they belonged.

“This is a military operation, is it not?” Lennox said, and he was holding one of the guns that definitely had not been put into production yet. Excellent, Tony was pleased to see that Pepper had helped them raid his personal stash. “We’re taking over.”

Simmons let out a displeased hiss, like a drenched cat. “This is _Sector Seven_ , it is not _military_ – “

“Well, it’s military now.” Lennox said, with a bit of a smirk, and stepped forward, grinning at them. “Heya, Sam, Tony. We were sort of afraid you’d gotten killed.”

“We’re hale and healthy,” Tony smirked, and inclined his head. “Good to see you, Captain.”

“A pleasure.” He smirked. “Epps has been beside himself.”

Tony snorted. “I doubt that.”

“I don’t.” Sam smirked, and patted Bumblebee’s shoulder. “C’mon, big guy, Optimus is waiting for us. Let’s go bring him the cube, huh?”

Bumblebee headed along beside him, with an absolute bounce to his step. “ _If you feeling like a pimp nigga, go and brush your shoulders off_.”

“Should we be alarmed by how much gangster rap Bumblebee chooses to express himself using?” Tony asked, cheerfully, as he headed along towards the little group of newcomers, grinning at Rhodey as he neared him. “Hey there, buddy… long time, no see.”

“Mm. Had something to do with a ‘fun-vee’?” Rhodey smirked at him, and why, exactly, was his friend here, anyway? “Though you look like you’ve had a bit of an upgrade.”

“Thanks,” he smirked, and tugged him closer for a moment, in an awkward one-armed hug that probably wasn’t all that comforting, considering he was in a suit of robotic armour, but hey, his friend deserved a hug. He hadn’t gotten to hug him since he wasn’t _dead_ , all those months ago. He released his friend, meeting his eyes, then took a deep breath, and smiled at him. “Thanks for coming.”

“Of course I came.” Rhodey rolled his eyes, and clapped his shoulder. “Now, what say we go save the world, huh?”

 

\---

 

“You know how weird this is, right?” Tony said, looking around.

“What… because we’re driving along the road in a transport truck with a robot?” Sam said, thumbs hooked in his pockets as he walked back and forth, idly. Bumblebee’s head was swiveling side to side as he watched Sam walk, sort of curiously.

“No, because the transport truck _happens_ to be a robot itself?” He said, leaning back against the inside wall of the box, frowning. “Optimus!” He called, not sure if the Autobot could even hear them, considering they were, well, _inside_ him. And yeah, that didn’t seem wrong and slightly creepy at _all_ … “It’s really weird, being inside of you. Could we at least say we’re in your stomach, so this doesn’t get _really_ creepy?”

The only response they got from Optimus was a low chuckle.

“It could be worse.” Epps pointed out, where he leaned on the opposite wall, eyes closed.

“I fail to see how.” Tony rolled his eyes.

“…he could be moaning and making sexually inappropriate comments?” Sam pointed out, stopping in front of Bumblebee, smirking slightly.

“…yes, it could be worse.” He blinked.

“I’m not enjoying this conversation,” Lennox said, frowning slightly as he paced at the end of the box, hands on his hips.

Epps snorted.

“I don’t like that we left Rhodey and Pepper back in the Hoover Dam,” Tony said, crossing his arms, then frowned, and unfolded them. It didn’t really work properly, when he was wearing the suit. Which _really_ needed a name other than ‘Tony’s robot suit’, didn’t it? He could call it his Autobot skin or something… no, that was still weird. He’d have to think of something. “I mean, I know that there’s a good reason and all, but _fuck_ , I do not like that we left them there. It doesn’t feel safe.”

“I’m pretty sure that under the Hoover Dam is one of those places that we can assume would definitely be safe,” Epps said, frowning slightly.

“Yeah, except that Megatron is under there,” he said, drumming his fingers on his thigh. No, that didn’t really work, either.

“He’s frozen,” Sam reminded him, and settled to sit on Bumblebee’s feet.

The Autobot made a contented sort of sound, and patted Sam’s head as though he was petting him. It was sort of adorable.

“I know that, I just… I don’t like it.” Tony said, finally. “I don’t have to like everything, you know.”

Epps smirked slightly, and muttered something that Tony didn’t entirely catch, but he definitely heard the words ‘ _something you would like_ ’ tossed in there, and Bumblebee let out a chirping sort of sound that he assumed was laughter, and played a snippet of an audience roaring in laughter at a comedy show, somewhere. Very nice.

Lennox rolled his eyes, and leaned on the back door.

“So.” Tony shifted forward, and laid his hand on the top of the Cube, considering it. “This is all of the knowledge of the Cybertronians, huh?”

Bumblebee nodded.

He considered that, absolutely itching to get to a computer and demand JARVIS run every diagnostic that Tony had ever developed on it, to try and figure out if there was any way for a human to ever access every tiny bit of that information. Because _man_ that was so his type of thing, and he would _love_ to get to learn everything that they knew. Who _knew_ what kind of stuff they might learn, if they could find a way to access all of their history and medical files… it sort of gave him a major hard-on, just thinking about it.

…shame Bumblebee and Lennox were here, at this moment.

…also a shame that they were inside Optimus Prime. He didn’t really want to get laid if he had to get laid inside the belly of the Autobot leader. That would probably be _beyond_ awkward, if you asked him.

“ _So here’s a penny for your thoughts, a quarter for the call_ …” Bumblebee’s radio sang, and the Autobot reached forward, his own fingers, much, _much_ larger than Tony’s  curling over his, as though trying to hold his hand. Funny, it looked like a much larger robot trying to comfort a smaller one, when Tony was in his suit.

Tony smiled, crookedly. “Just wishing I knew what it said, Bee.”

Bumblebee tilted his head to the side, considering that seriously, then shifted to pat the top of Tony’s head.

He snorted, and ducked his head out of the Autobot’s reach. “Hey now, I’m not your lapdog… that’s Sam there.”

“Hey!” Sam yelped, but he was grinning.

“So,” Epps said, seriously, though he stood to move closer to them, sitting heavily beside Tony before he finished his thought. “You think this is going to end with a knock down, drag out fight?”

“Optimus said they’re just going to try to get the All Spark off of the planet,” Tony frowned slightly, though he was still tracing the designs on the Cube. If nothing else, he wanted to know more about the Sparks, about what made them work – about why, perhaps, he had one thrumming away in his chest. What did it mean? Optimus had said that the Sparks were like souls – did that mean that Tony somehow had the soul of an Autobot working in his chest? Or was it more of a metaphor? He was pretty sure the only chance he ever had at learning any of that was in this Cube, right here, and _god_ , he did not want to see this thing leave the planet. “So presumably, if they get it away from Earth – and therefore away from the Decepticons being able to use it to turn all of our machines into their minions – than we should be fine. The war, presumably, would move on. To, you know, whatever other planet they’re going to land on and wage battle on.”

“ _All by myself,_ ” Bumblebee warbled, letting out a plaintive sounding whistle. “ _Don’t wanna be… all by myself, anymore…_ ”

“Aww, Bee…” Sam twisted to pat the chest of the robot whose lap he was still sitting in. “You could stay here on Earth with us, we wouldn’t mind. Hell, Tony could probably find a nice lab to put you up in, with his robots…”

“I could, too,” Tony grinned at Bumblebee.

“ _This is the army, Mister Jones_ ,” the Autobot sang, and hugged Sam against his chest like a human teddy bear.

“He’s a soldier, guys.” Epps said, quietly, though he was leaning on Tony’s shoulder again, as he said it. “He’s supposed to follow orders and do his job. He can’t stay with you, even if he wants to, if Optimus takes the battle off the planet, because he’s a _soldier_ , and he’s gotta fight the battle the way he’s supposed to. It’s his job, it’s his _nature_ , it’s his lot in life. He can’t just… stay.”

“Well, then maybe we ought to find a way to end this war before it’s gotta leave the planet, then.” Tony said, with a grin. “Because Bee deserves to be a civilian.”

Bumblebee bounced slightly, where he sat, cheerfully.

“Epps!” Lennox suddenly interrupted, startling them as he hurried towards them, frowning slightly. “Do you hear that?”

Epps frowned, lifting his head, then his eyes widened slightly. “Please tell me I ain’t hearing that right.”

“Why? What are you guys hearing?” Sam frowned.

Tony scrambled up to his feet, eyes widening as he pressed his ear to the wall of the truck back, listening hard. It sounded like one of his planes, at first, but no, there was something lower to the pitch, more power than the engines of the standard military versions of the Starktech planes, like it was a copy of one, but not quite right – better, actually, than the original. Which was not something that Tony admitted lightly, to be honest, but he knew the sound of engines when he heard them, and this was a stronger, smoother, faster version of the engines in a military plane of his own design.

“Bee?” Tony called, ear still pressed to the metal. “Are any of the Autobots running around as planes?”

The yellow bot shook his head.

“Then that’s a Decepticon.” He stepped back from the wall, and hollered, “ _Optimus_ , incoming Decep – “

He didn’t manage to get the words out.

Because Optimus suddenly swung hard to the left, and they all tumbled about in the back of Optimus’ bed. Bumblebee let out a terrified sound, and reached out to catch his hands against the opposite sides of the bed, then as they started skidding past him, the Autobot let go, and caught them each as they tumbled towards the doors, clutching all four men in his arms as he braced himself for impact. The back doors of the tractor trailer flew open, and they all flew out onto the road, Bumblebee cradling them with his body to prevent injuries. Though he tumbled end over end for a moment, Bee got his feet under him, and stood, helmet pulled down over his face again, as though ready for battle.

“What’s going on?!” Sam gasped, breathless, as he clutched at Bee’s arms.

“Decepticons,” Tony panted.

His heart was _really_ not happy with him, for all of this running around and adrenaline spiking.

Optimus was shifting behind them, but so where the others, moving and surging forward already, but that made sense, because there was a fucking _plane_ turning into a seriously evil looking Decepticon, throwing himself through the air towards them, and this, Tony thought, was probably not going to end well.

“Get the humans and the Cube somewhere safe, Bumblebee!” Optimus rumbled, armour plates shifting to reveal weapons. Tony really needed to get himself guns like that, to build into his own suit of armour.

Bumblebee nodded, desperately, and started to run, shifting as he did.

A moment later, they were screaming down the road – and Tony was startled to realize that they weren’t in the desert anymore, when had they actually gotten into the city? – in that yellow Camaro again, all sort of piled willy nilly into the seats, in a strange sort of pattern that didn’t exactly make sense. Tony was half sprawled in the back seat with Lennox sitting on top of his legs, then Epps was sitting in the driver’s seat, looking a little confused, while Sam sat backwards in the front passenger seat, leaning against the dashboard. Sam was cradling the All Spark in his lap, too, palms pressed against the side of the alien box.

Tony twisted in his seat, looking back out the rear window, frowning.

Optimus was fighting a Decepticon, a massive dark machine that was fighting _dirty_ , too, slashing at the Autobot leader like a furious thing, desperate and angry. “What are they trying to _do_?” Tony demanded. “Just get the spark? What makes them think they have a hope in _hell_?”

Epps shook his head, resting his hands on the dashboard, on either side of the steering wheel. “Never underestimate the underdogs.”

Lennox’s walkie chirped, and the Captain blinked, surprised, checking it. “Lennox here.”

Despite the battle, despite the rush, despite the adrenaline of running, every single one of them twisted to watch him take the call. It was human nature, perhaps – or it was the creeping sense of dread that seemed to fill the car. Something was coming. They knew it, even though no one actually _knew_ it, actually. One of those things where intuition kicks in.

“Captain!” It was Rhodey’s voice that came over the walkie talkie, which did nothing to relieve any of their fears. “We have a situation.”

“Yeah, so do we, we’re under attack.” Lennox frowned.

“So are we.” Rhodey answered, and despite himself, Tony shifted forward, towards Lennox, half tempted to grab for the walkie. He didn’t like hearing that his friend was under attack, it sort of bothered him. A lot. “Only that ain’t the worst of it. The big problem is that _someone_ managed to wake up big, bad, and frozen. NBE-One, or Megatron, or whatever the fuck he wants to be called, he ain’t _frozen_ anymore.”

It was Sam that spoke for the rest of them. “Oh fucking shit.”

“And that,” Tony answered his own previous question, “Is why they think they have a chance in hell. All right. Bee… we might want to run faster.”

The engine roared, and Bumblebee careened down the streets, skidding between other cars, bobbing and weaving through traffic as he screamed even faster down the road. They had to get the Cube somewhere safe, as quickly as possible, and hey, even if the Decepticons had already managed to find both their leader and the All Spark, there was the off chance that they might still want to have Sam Witwicky and Tony Stark in their control. Sam’s usefulness had sort of ended with the finding of the Cube, but they might still want him because of who his grandfather was. And Tony, well… he was still Howard Stark’s son.

Lennox frowned, and said, “Colonel, have you got the civilians out of there, safely?”

“Ortiz got Pepper onto an Apache,” Rhodey said, which made Tony let out a soft groan of relief. “They’re looping around to Mission City, they’re coming to pick you and the Cube up, to take you somewhere safe. Try and get to as high of ground as possible, got it? You got flares?”

Epps shifted, and tugged a few out of the belt of his uniform. “Got a few, orange smoke.”

“Orange. Got it.” Lennox nodded. “Orange smoke, we’ll be there with orange smoke.”

“Good, Captain. I’ll pass on the message.”

And then a massive gunmetal black and grey Decepticon landed on the street in front of them, in a crouch, the pavement splintering out around his feet like glass, and they sort of got distracted from the conversation.

“Holy _shit_!” Sam yelped.

Bumblebee skidded to the side, trying not to drive straight into the Decepticon – which would probably be a bad idea, all things considered – and transformed as he did, so that the humans, unfortunately, spilled back out onto the road again, but Bee was able to throw himself forward, the battle cry from Braveheart spilling out of his radio speakers as he struck at the attacker.

Which, all things considered, Tony figured was sort of badass.

“Shit,” Tony breathed, as he scrambled to his feet, then glanced at Epps. “Get Sam to higher ground.”

Lennox smacked the other soldier’s shoulder, and pointed upwards, to a citadel not too far away, maybe five or six blocks, clearly distinctive with a ring of statues around the top of the highest point. “Get him there, then flare it up.”

Epps nodded, quickly, and fisted his fingers in the back of Sam’s sweater, hauling him up to his feet. “Run.”

“Yes sir,” Sam panted, and the two men began to run.

“Now what do we do about this?” Tony panted, looking up at Bumblebee and the Decepticon, grabbing Lennox’s arm to tug him behind a handy car when their fighting got just a touch too close. Sure, he knew that the military man was _more_ than capable of taking care of himself, but Tony liked to take care of those he cared about, and Lennox was his American Angel, had saved him over and over again, out in the desert. Besides, focusing on Lennox and Bumblebee helped him _not_ focus on the fact that Epps and Sam were running through the city streets with the All Spark and no protection other than Tony’s experimental weapons.

“Hard to fire, they’re moving too fast,” Lennox rumbled.

“Shit.” He murmured, then an idea crossed his mind, and Tony stood up, back out of the shelter of the car.

“ _Stark_!”

“Just… trust me.” He said, and ordered, quietly, “JARVIS, divert power to the arc reactor.”

Bumblebee and the Decepticon were still warring, and it was sort of odd, Tony thought, how very _human like_ the battle was. They fought like they were men, not machine, punching and striking and kicking. He’d never really considered how humanoid robots _would_ fight, but he sort of imagined it would be more like Ultimate Robot Fighting, or something. Pulling sawblades from out of the middle of nowhere, or trying to flip each other over. But then, Ultimate Fighting Robots weren’t… like humans. And Bee, at least, he’d found to be extremely human like. This just seemed like an MMA cage fight, or something, a good old brawl.

And it was kind of startling, Tony thought, exactly how violent his normally sweet and gentle Bumblebee could be, in those circumstances.

But Bee was losing.

When the pressure from the surging power in the arc reactor was starting to make h is chest actually burn in agony, Tony took a deep breath, and howled, “Bee! Duck!”

To his credit, Bumblebee dropped like a stone, without any hesitation.

Maybe the Decepticon hadn’t been expecting a human to have a Spark, or anyone as puny and squishy as Tony Stark to have Cybertronian technology at their disposal. Or maybe he just didn’t think Tony was a threat. Maybe it was overconfidence. Either way, though, Tony fired the arc reactor, and it struck the Decepticon in the face.

And then it just didn’t have a face, anymore.

The giant metal body sort of swayed, then tumbled backwards like a tree that had been chopped down, landing on the concrete with a metallic crash, the pavement splintering out under him.

Bumblebee pushed himself up onto his hands and knees, and hesitated, then glanced back at Tony, and chirped, cheerfully, “ _Yippee kay yay, motherfucker_!”

Tony snorted, and stepped forward, clapping Bumblebee’s leg. “Good job, big guy.”

Bee chirped, happily, and nudged him, almost knocking him over in the process.  
  
"You like playing the hero, don't you?" Lennox said, as he jogged up to the pair.  
  
"Play?" Tony arched a brow.

He snorted.

Bumblebee nudged Tony’s shoulder again, and whined slightly, his speakers flaring as he played some television quote at him, a frustrated sounding kid saying, “ _Take care of Sammy_.”

“Yeah, we need to find Sam and Epps.” Tony looked at Lennox, frowning. “Ready to try and get him?”

“Yeah, we’re supposed to be getting into the same helicopter they’re heading for, so…” Lennox nodded, frowning as he clapped Tony on the shoulder. “Think that suit of yours is up for flight?”

“Not sure.” He admitted.

Bumblebee chirped, and offered them his arms.

“I think we have a ride anyway,” Lennox smirked at him, and grabbed Bumblebee’s arm, letting the Autobot scoop them up into his arms, shaking his head when Tony grumbled that he wasn’t some _action figure_ to be picked up and man handled – though with the armour that Tony was wearing, he sort of had to be treated like an action figure, because he wasn’t all that bendable when he was all stuck in armour.

Bumblebee started to run. He covered ground far faster than humans ever would, sort of bounding along.

And then the street exploded.

Well, the street didn’t explode, Tony was quick to point out that this was hyperbole and that this was definitely _not_ in fact an incident in which the street exploded. However, there was a sizable explosion on the ground, and hundreds of windows in seemingly every direction shattered simultaneously. Bumblebee dropped down to the ground, curling around the two fragile humans that he was carrying around with him, shielding them with his own body. There was debris flying through the air and striking the Autobot’s metallic hide.

“What happened?!” Tony shouted.

“…there appears to be a… well, the mother of all fights happening… _right_ behind us.”

He ducked his head under Bumblebee’s arm, ignoring the way that the Autobot tried to get him back under cover again, and looked at what Lennox was referring to. Optimus Prime was fighting a very familiar looking figure, one that Tony had seen just a couple hours before, malevolent and _frozen_. Only Megatron _wasn’t_ frozen anymore, he was very much alive and awake and apparently pissed off and looking for some revenge, because he was _laughing_ as he slammed a massive weapon that looked an awful lot like a sword into Optimus’ face, throwing the Autobot back into a bank, which seemed to crumple inward under the pressure of being struck by a giant robot.

Yeah, this wasn’t really going well.

“We need to get the Cube out of here before Megatron figures out where it is,” Tony said, almost breathlessly, and slapped Bumblebee’s chest, right over where he knew the Autobot’s Spark was. “Can you get us to Sam and Epps, Bee?”

“ _Are you feeling lucky, punk_?” Bee said, and scooped them back up again before he started running.

Bumblebee was more nimble in his robotic form than he was as a car, though he was certainly faster in his car form. Still, he leapt over debris and overturned cars, cradling his humans tight in his arms as he hurried as quickly as he could towards the building they had designated as the gathering place. As they ran, Lennox pointed skywards, and called, “Orange smoke!”

“They’re up there,” Tony breathed, relieved.

Bumblebee made a happy sound, and darted into the building itself.

Turned out, almost immediately, that this was not a building designed for an Autobot to travel in. Sure, the staircases were probably wider than many of the more modern buildings around, but Bee wasn’t really suited to climbing _steps_ , exactly, and when he tried, the stairs bent and finally broke under his weight. He was car weight, after all. Finally, frustrated, Bee shifted Lennox and Tony until he held them in one arm, and started climbing from floor to floor through the center of the building, reaching up and curling his fingers around the railings that prevented people from tumbling several stories down through the centre of the building, hauling himself up. Grabbing the edge of each landing, he would haul himself up, monkey like, until finally he burst out onto the roof – and burst was probably a good adjective for it, really, as he sort of had to demolish part of the roof in order to fit his far-larger-than-human frame out of the doorway.

Sam and Epps were standing on the edge of the roof, and Tony was pleased to see that Epps was protecting the kid, who was still cradling the Cube to his chest.

Bumblebee set his burden down, then waved at them, cheerfully.

“We’re gonna get outta here,” Sam grinned, and pointed behind them at the sky, where an Apache helicopter was approaching them, getting nearer. “Pepper and Letty, right? They’re coming to get us and the Cube.”

“Well. Thank god.” Tony sighed, stepping forward, grinning.

Only that couldn’t be right.

There was only one Apache helicopter, in the entire world, that he happened to know the serial numbers of. It wasn’t exactly the sort of thing that your average billionaire playboy philanthropist weapons developer decided to do, memorizing serial numbers of American military vessels. Not a good use of resources. However, Tony had seen this helicopter three times now, and had researched it extensively in the brief periods of time he’d had access to computers and the military databases. That serial number had been assigned to an airforce Apache that had been shot down over the desert, then three months later had shown up and tried to kidnap him several times over.

Because that wasn’t a helicopter.

“Sam!” He shouted, darting forward to catch the boy by the shoulder, tugging him back and away from the edge of the building. “That’s not them.”

“What?” Sam looked at him with wide eyes, startled, then all five of their heads snapped to look at the sky in horror when the Apache opened fire, sending a missile streaking through the air towards them. It slammed into the edge of the roof, and erupted, throwing them all back like bowling pins, scattered by an explosive bowling ball, and they tumbled across the roof.

Tony found himself laying on his back on the roof, gasping for air as he stared up at the sky, and feeling very much like this was a sense of déjà vu. His chest ached again, though this time it was because of the arc reactor and not because of shrapnel, and the sun was shining through a startlingly blue sky at him, cut only with the smoke of fire and explosions, only if it was any consolation, it wasn’t quite as blindingly hot this time.

The same robot with the evil red eyes leaned over him again, too, and he sucked in a sharp breath, alarmed.

“Tony Stark.” The robot said, then for the first time since he’d started seeing this damn thing, the Decepticon that had haunted his life for months now spoke English words that weren’t just his name.

It said, simply: “I’m _really_ looking forward to this.”

Which wasn’t, you know, ominous at all.

The Decepticon - he sort of wished he had a _name_ for it, that they'd been properly introduced so that he could actually refer to him as anything other than just the vague title of 'Decepticon that had tried to kidnap him several times, now' - reached for Tony, those robotic hands reaching for him the same way they had in the desert in Afghanistan.  
  
And then Bumblebee leapt on his back, jerking the Decepticon back.  
  
"Bee!" He heard Sam howl, and Tony struggled to his feet, eyes wide and startled, alarmed. The Autobot was struggling with him, metallic fingers tearing at the other robot's face, trying to get him to leave Tony alone, trying to save a squishy human that - let's be honest, Tony thought to himself - probably didn't deserve to be saved. It was a scary fight, because it was _desperate_. Bee fought with the determination of a drowning man, struggling to keep above the water by any means necessary, catching some of the wires and tubes inside the Decepticon's throat, tearing them out, oil spilling out over the roof of the building, spurting as though Bee had severed an artery. The Decepticon howled, and whirled around to catch Bumblebee by his head, throwing him down to the roof like a wrestler tossing his opponent in the ring. Bee, however, scrambled to his feet, and launched himself at the other robot again, striking him around the middle like he was a tackling linebacker, and the two robots sailed right off the roof of the building, tumbling through the air.   
  
" _Bee_!" Sam howled, grabbing the edge of the roof.   
  
"Don't get yourself in danger, kid," Epps growled, and caught Sam's shoulder, hauling him back from the edge.  
  
"But _Bee_ ," he gasped, looking up at the other.  
  
"I hate to say this, but...." Tony looked over the edge. The others had fallen, smashed into the pavement at the base of their high rise, but they were _moving_. Bee wasn't dead. That, at least, was a relief. "There's not really much you can do for him right now. Bee can take care of himself."  
  
"Bee came for us," Sam said, fiercely, looking offended by the fact that Tony _wasn't_ throwing himself over the edge of the roof after their friend. "We need to go for him."  
  
"And I'm all for that, but - "  
  
A giant metal hand slammed into the roof of the building, just behind them, sending them scattered like ten pins again. Tony really needed to work on some kind of stabiliser that could be attached to the waistband of a person's pants, or something, he sort of figured that the government would pay hand over fist for those devices, for the military, and they'd sort of help with this whole current situation, but of course, this _wasn't_ the time for Tony to be pondering this sort of thing, maybe he should be focusing on the fact that a red-eyed, cackling maniacally Megatron was pulling himself up onto the roof, and was reaching for Sam and the All-Spark.  
  
Tony flared up the arc reactor, firing at the Decepticon leader.  
  
It didn't prove itself to be quite as effective as it had been on the Decepticon that Bumblebee had been fighting earlier. Instead of disintegrating a face, it just sort of dented Megatron's shoulder plate, and the Decepticon sneered, clearly not intimidated. "Puny human," he rumbled. "Trying to be one of us... you can never achieve the perfection that is a Cybertronian. Now, Samuel Witwicky... give me the All Spark, and I * _may_ * let you live as my human _pet_."  
  
"Not real encouraging, dude," Epps grumbled, and fired at the Decepticon with that experimental gun of Tony's.  
It was even less effective than Tony's arc reactor blast had been.  
  
"Never going to happen," Sam said, backing up, and leaning over the edge of the roof again, holding the Cube out as far as his arms could reach. "I'll drop it."  
  
"Go ahead." Megatron rumbled. "The Cube will survive."  
  
"Yeah, but you need to unlock it," Sam said, and Tony knew, now, that Sam was bluffing through his fucking teeth, but maybe the Decepticon wouldn't be able to tell. It was easier to lie to a machine than it was to lie to a person. Hell, Tony sort of figured that it was a lot like lying on the internet - easy as anything. Even smartass Sam could lie to it. "I've locked it, and the secret for unlocking the All Spark is inside my brain, and my brain only. If I throw myself over the edge, you will _never_ wake up the machine armies of Earth."  
  
Megatron hesitated, as though seriously considering that.  
  
Then some well meaning American military plane - and Tony was really going to be having words with Rhodey about the way that his man were having serious impulse control issues - fired at the back of Megatron's head. Megatron, naturally, was not terribly impressed with this, and he slammed his hand on the roof, then grabbed for Sam and the Cube.  
  
Naturally, Sam bolted back, to try and get out of the Decepticon's way.  
  
Only problem was, there wasn't anything _beyond_ him, it was just the edge of the roof he was one, and when he bolted back, he went right off the edge of the roof.  
  
Sam looked startled, as he discovered that there was no roof under his feet.  
  
And then he started to fall.  
  
The men raced towards the edge of the roof, Epps shouting something about rope, but Tony was already running, and he followed Sam right over the edge of the roof, shouting for JARVIS to launch up his thrusters and he felt the rockets in his boots light up as he began racing through the air, towards the teenager that was falling straight out of the sky. It was a strange sort of feeling, being both man and machine, a machine coming to life around him like an iron lung and an elaborate sort of second, metallic skin, all wrapped into one. It thrummed around him, keeping him safe and contained, but simultaneously making him more vulnerable and exposed, out where there was no return. If his rockets cut out now, he'd be dead.   
  
But there were certain things that were worth risking for.  
  
His arm slid around Sam's waist, catching him, and Tony tugged the teenager tight against his chest as he swung his legs up to change their trajectory, flying upwards instead.  
  
Sam clutched at Tony's neck and shoulders with one hand, the other still clutching at the Cube, and gasped, "I am not your damsel in distress."  
  
"Could have fooled me." Tony shot back, grinning, and screamed through the sky, trying to get as far away from Megatron as possible, trusting Epps and Lennox to take care of themselves - they were capable military men, they should be able to do that just fine, right?  
  
God, he hoped so.  
  
"Optimus!" Sam gasped, pointing further down the road.   
  
" _That_ sounds like a very safe place," Tony agreed, pleased, and swung towards the Autobot leader, relieved. "Optimus!"  
  
"Tony, Sam - _no_!"  
  
That was not the response that Tony had been expecting, he'd been expecting Optimus to help them, to welcome them with open arms and help them run to get the All Spark somewhere safe that the Decepticons wouldn't be able to find it. Hell, help them get it off planet, even. He certainly didn't expect him to shout for them to stay back and not come further. That didn't make sense.  
  
Until it did, a moment later, and they were plucked out of the sky by metallic fingers.  
  
Clinging at each other, eyes wide, Tony and Sam found themselves in Megatron's fingers, right in front of the massive Decepticon's face, staring into his red eyes. He sneered, as though amused, and said, "Thank you, Tony Stark, for saving me the effort of scraping the _remains_ of Samuel Witwicky off the ground to extract the information from his mind. You've made yourself very useful. You can die in the knowledge that you were of use to your kind. Now, to take care of your... _mockery_ of a Spark..."  
  
"Tony!" Sam howled, shocked.  
  
Feeling sort of cold, Tony looked down, startled. Megatron had moved so quickly that he hadn't even seen him do it, but he _had_ , the Decepticon's index finger was embedded in Tony's chest, the glass plate over his arc reactor shattered, the metal finger embedded right into the reactor itself. He could feel it sparking and sputtering around the metallic finger, trying to work, and dimly, he could hear the speakers built into the neck of his suit crackling as a desperate sounding JARVIS shouted that the suit was rapidly losing power. But Tony couldn't move, his whole body seemed to have locked up, and he could already _feel_ the shrapnel in his chest starting to move, squirming through the muscles and the flesh, trying to get into the valves, trying to tear his heart apart. But his heart wasn't making it better, it was pounding, harder and harder, until he couldn't hear Sam's shouts of fury, he couldn't hear Megatron's laughter, he couldn't even hear JARVIS' desperate please for him to wake up. He could only hear the pounding of his own heart as his vision started to go grey around the edges -   
  
And then his world became light again.   
  
It was so bright that Tony could _taste_ it - the light was bright and blue and tangy and tasted of ozone and smoke and freezies that Jarvis, the old human butler, Jarvis, not the machine that he'd built inspired by his oldest and only childhood friend, used to buy him when the days were bad and his father was really being demanding, sweet and tangy and above all else _forbidden_ \- but more than taste it, Tony could feel it, curling through his veins like liquid lightning, careening into his mind and his gut and back into his chest, where it coalesced into a single bright point of pain and pleasure and joy and agony and more. Eyes wide, spine arched, he gasped, the white that was his vision starting to fade into actual shapes and forms.

He was laying on the pavement, Tony realized, still feeling all sort of fuzzy and buzzy and electric lightning sliding through his veins.

“…what happened to Megatron?” He whispered, panting.

“Optimus is trying to chase him into the ocean, I think,” Sam’s voice said, and Tony twisted his head slightly, looking up at him. Sam sort of seemed to look like he was haloed in light, as though he was an angel leaning over him, waking him up, which as far as Tony was concerned, was the most clichéd thing he’d ever heard in his entire life. God, he should be able to come up with something better than that, he was so much better than _that_ , so he decided that perhaps Sam looked more like a holographic projection of a perfect robotic program. Yeah, that seemed more of his thing. “So we’re not in his hands anymore.”

“So we’re not.” He said, closing his eyes for a moment. “How am I not dead?”

“Backlash. You sort of blasted Megatron’s face in half.”

He frowned, confused. “…how did I do that? I tried to hit him with the arc reactor before, and nothing happened.”

“Yeah, well… that was sort of before I panicked and shoved the All Spark into your chest.” Sam cleared his throat, awkwardly, and Tony opened his eyes to look up at Sam, bewildered. “Well… he destroyed your arc reactor, right? And I remembered that whole thing where Optimus was saying that what you had in your chest was a Spark, like they have in their chests, their power sources. So when Megatron destroyed it, well…  I sort of figured that this thing was called the _All Spark_ , so….”

Tony shifted, awkwardly, the suit whirring with a rough sort of sound, the way that servos often sounded when they were full of sand, and touched his chest. It felt hot, even through the robotic gloves. “Didn’t Optimus Prime say something about shoving the All Spark into _his_ Spark to destroy it, as a last defense thing?”

“Well, yeah, but… your Spark was already smashed, so…”

He let his hand drop back to the street, and Tony sighed, frankly relieved that he wasn’t _dead_ , all things considered. “It was considerably _larger_ than my arc reactor was, though…”

“Yeah, well… it transformed once, I sort of figured…”

He grunted, and pushed himself up, so that he was sitting up, instead of laying there, helplessly. After all, they were in the middle of battle.

…weren’t they?

“…this seems remarkably non-battle like,” Tony said, looking around, sort of amused. Sam was sweat and dirt sheened again, the same way that he had been when they’d first run into each other, under that bridge and ran for their lives from a robot that wanted to kill them. The teenager was grinning at him, though, so that seemed encouraging, and he tore his eyes away from Sam to look around the street, at the way that soldiers were ushering people towards safety, and as he watched, a familiar uniformed man jogged closer, and Epps hurried towards them, teeth bright with a grin in his soot-smeared face as he headed up to them, laughing. “Hey, we, ah… done with the war and all?”

“Hey, you’re alive!” Sam said, cheerfully, looking up at Epps.

The soldier smirked, and crouched between them, forearms resting on his knees as he looked back and forth between them. “So’re you. Was sort of expecting you _not_ to be, considering that damn explosion of yours, but…”

“Hey, what fun is life if you don’t live dangerously?” Tony grinned, crookedly. “Speaking of…”

Grabbing the front of Epps’ uniform, he tugged him forward, and kissed him, a searing sort of desperate thing, and was happy to discover that the larger man was more than willing to press back into it, until when Tony _finally_ broke the kiss, chest heaving, he found himself completely breathless. Sighing softly, he touched his lower lip, considering that for a moment – holy _shit_ that was good – then grinned, and the moment he’d caught his breath enough that he didn’t feel light headed anymore, Tony reached forward, and grabbed the front of Sam’s hoodie. Hauling him forward, practically into his lap, he kissed him, too, and fuck whatever paparazzi might be lurking around in the middle of this warzone. At the moment, he didn’t care.

“ _Cause I know that he knows I’m unfaithful, and it kills him inside to know that I happy with some other guy_ …”

Tony broke the kiss, finally, panting, and laughed as he leaned back, grinning up at the bright yellow and black Autobot that was leaning over them. “Yeah, yeah, all right, Bee, get down here, I’ll make out with you, too.”

Sam snorted and dropped his forehead to Tony’s shoulder, and Epps laughed, loud and cheerful.

It was terribly gratifying.

 

\---

 

EPILOGUE

 

It looked weird.

Tony stood in his ensuite bathroom, shirtless, with just a low-slung pair of pyjama pants on, considering himself in the mirror. He honestly wasn’t sure where in the world he’d gotten _pyjamas_ from, but he sort of assumed that it was something that Pepper had done, just in case he should ever find himself with company in his house that he didn’t want to be naked in front of. Which, actually, he _liked_ being naked in front of company, actually, but still, there he stood in pyjama pants, looking at his own reflection in the mirror, and reached up to touch his chest, warily.

The shell of the arc reactor was still in place, exactly as it had been before, when he’d tried to find a way to save his life back in that cave. But it wasn’t the same blue light that it was before. Well, it was still a blue light, but it wasn’t the same round reactor that he had before.

Sam really _had_ shoved the All Spark into his chest.

He could see the Cybertronian symbols, clear as day, in the metal that was inside the casing, that somehow the All Spark had reshaped itself to fill the space, and the symbols themselves glowed with the same bright blue that the arc reactor had, before. It was oddly beautiful, actually, in a terrifying sort of way.

“JARVIS?” He called, quietly.

“Yes, sir?” His computer system said, sounding just as gentle and quiet as Tony was, as though he, too, felt that at this early in the morning, no one had to be loud and boisterous. Mornings like this were meant for coffee, pancakes, and sleeping in, not loud and complicated conversations. But they had to have it, didn’t they?

“Have you run any scans on my ah… I’m not sure what to call this.” He waved his hand at his chest. “On my _Spark_?”

“Of course, sir.” JARVIS said, at once.

“Yeah? And what’ve you got out of said scans?” He asked, looking up at the ceiling for a moment, waiting to see what his robotic assistant thought of it.

“Well, it continues to keep the shrapnel out of your heart, and it’s continuing to provide power the same way that the old arc reactor did. It, too, continues to read gamma radiation. However…” JARVIS hesitated for a moment, and in his mind, he imagined him as a man shuffling through papers, though of course no AI had to shuffle through papers to get information out of his databanks. Amusing mental image, anyway. “The levels of power that it provides are absolutely astronomical in comparison to what the arc reactor gave you before. As well, it emits signals at the same frequency that the Autobots and the Decepticons do… it appears to be attempting to actually communicate with you. I believe, sir, that you have an alien intelligence in your chest.”

Tony blinked, stunned, and poked at the All Spark. Didn’t even hurt. “So what’s it saying? We figured out that algorithm for translation…”

JARVIS sounded downright amused. “I believe it’s telling you stories, sir.”

“…stories?”

“Yes, sir. Stories. I think it’s trying to relate the history of Cybertron to you. Perhaps all of their myths, or their history, I’m not certain of which, I’ve been recording it, hoping to create a database of their stories for you. After all, I thought you’d like this information.”

“Yeah, I want that information.”He grinned. “You’re awesome, JARVIS.”

“Hm. It’s about time you acknowledged that.” His AI said, sounding amused, and Tony smirked, tapping the surface of the All Spark again, relieved. “Now, is there any particular reason you’re lurking in the bathroom, this time of the morning?”

“Couldn’t sleep.” He considered that, tracing one of the whorls of patterning in the metal. Cybertronian language, written or spoken, seemed like a beautifully mathematical language. Maybe he should ask Bumblebee if he could teach it to him. Well, maybe not Bumblebee, Bee could only speak through the radio, and he wasn’t sure that learning a language though clips of movies and music would really _work_ all that well, so maybe he ought to ask Optimus Prime, but Bumblebee was so much more _accessible_ , what with the fact that he sort of lived with him, at the moment. Tony had tricked out one of his labs for the Autobot, and Bee seemed to love it. Didn’t hurt, probably, that Dummy and Butterfingers thought Bumblebee was the most amazing robot in the universe, and they all but worshipped the ground he drove on. Followed him everywhere, and tried to learn everything that an Autobot could possibly teach a crappy robot that had been programmed by a fourteen year old genius for a school project. Maybe Bee could write it for him…?

“That seems like a poor reason to be here, sir, as you’re often unable to sleep,” JARVIS pointed out. “Especially considering the circumstances.”

“What circumstances?” He frowned, already distracted by scribbling notes on the mirror – that was the beauty of building your house yourself, and being able to turn the mirror in the bathroom into a massive touch screen that could be manipulated to your heart’s content – about how he could create a program via which Bumblebee could teach him the Cybertronian language.

“The circumstances of the men in your bed,” someone else spoke up.

Tony looked up, startled.

Epps stood in the doorway to the bathroom, leaning on the doorframe, arms crossed over his incredibly distracting and incredibly delicious looking chest as he arched a brow at him. “I only _have_ two more days of leave left, and you really want to waste the rest of it doing one of your… genius-y things?”

He frowned slightly, glancing at his notes, then back at Epps and those _arms_. “Yeah, no, I think I could be persuaded.”

“That’s what I thought.” Epps smirked, and held out a hand.

“I am _not_ a damsel, thank you very much.” Tony rolled his eyes, but took Epps’ hand, and let the other man lead him back into his own bedroom. “We all know that the damsel around here is Sam.”

“Oi,” Sam said, voice muffled from the way he had his face smushed into t he pillows. “I resent that remark.”

“You mispronounced ‘resemble’,” Tony drawled, crawling onto the bed and running the flat of his palm up the teenager’s spine, grinning when he groaned and arched into the touch like a cat. “So… Epps has two days left of leave, and _you_ are going to _have_ to go back to school eventually, so… whatever shall we do with ourselves until the real world intrudes and starts to demand we be responsible?”

Epps flopped on the bed, and grinned. “I’m sure we’ll think of something.”

“Yeah, I thought we might – “ Tony stopped midsentence, and paused for a moment, then arched a brow, and smiled fondly. “Bumblebee’s in the window again.”

The other two twisted to look, and sure enough, the yellow Autobot was standing outside of the window, and when he saw them all looking at him, waved cheerfully. “ _Good morning, good moooorning_ , _we talked the whole night through, good morning, good morning to you_!” He sang, and even through the thick glass window they could hear him.

“Well, that does put a _slight_ damper on some of my plans.” Epps said, at last.

“Unless you’re into being watched,” Sam muttered, into the pillow, smirking slightly.

“Not by _Bee_.” Tony rolled his eyes, and called, “JARVIS?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Tint the windows, please. Full dark.”

“At once, sir,” he said, and the windows blacked out completely.

“We’ll talk to you in a few hours, Bee!” Tony called, grinning as he did, pleased.

And just laughed when the Autobot sang in response: “ _Lonely, I’m Mister Lonely, I have nobody, for my owwwwwwnnnnn, I’m so lonely, I’m Mister Lonely…_ ”

Because Tony _wasn’t_ Mister Lonely.

 _You sound like a lonely man, Tony Stark_ , Yinsen had said to him, in that cave. And he was right, back then. Tony _was_ a lonely man.

But he wasn’t, not anymore.

 


End file.
